Zynga Publicity Stunts
By now most have probably heard that Alec Baldwin was kicked off an American Airlines flight last week for playing the Zynga game Words With Friends on his phone. Zynga wasn't about to let this golden opportunity pass and created the following image exclusively for TMZ (a popular American tabloid show). Some passengers on the plane said that Alec Balwin was actually talking on the phone and not playing a game. A crew member told the NY Post that he was removed because he became "violent, aggressive" toward the staff (1).
(image from TMZ)
Thanks to fellow passengers and Twitter, the story spread like wildfire. There was even a spoof about the incident on Saturday Night Live.
This incident generated a lot of publicity for Zynga and couldn't happen at a better time. Zynga shares will begin trading on Friday and financial analysts are already recommending that investors sell. Analyst Arvind Bhatia gave Zynga a underperform rating. Below is a video that contains more details. He clearly has the original Mafia Wars confused with Mafia Wars 2 (1).
On the iTunes Words With Friend Page Zynga boasts that there are over 20 million players addicted to their game. Zynga loves to inflate their metrics anyway they can. Mafia Wars has become a spam fest because of it. If people believe that there are over 20 million Words With Friends players then they probably believe there are over 25 million Mafia Wars players as the Facebook Application Data description states. These will be the people buying up stocks that many predict will go down in value fairly quickly. It was another record setting day in Mafia Wars and the Monthly Active Users fell below the 3 million mark. As long as Alec Baldwin is pimping Words With Friends, Zynga probably doesn't care what happens to Mafia Wars.
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