We haven’t talked much about Zynga on here in recent months, but it’s been having a rough time of it. How bad is the situation? Well, bad enough that the stock is actually literally worth less than the overall assets and securities of the company. In a word, the stock market believes Zynga is worthless. Zynga has lost a huge chunk of its value, although at least it’s not Digg.
Oh, and important employees keep (allegedly) quitting while the company fights allegations of insider trading in court.
Amidst all this, you’d be forgiven for wondering how Zynga is trying to fix all of its troubles. Apparently, if some are to be believed, it’s hoping you’re too clumsy to close out its now annoyingly large ads.
Analyst Richard Greenfield thinks Zynga is trying for some “fat fingers”, mobile slang for website visits caused by people accidentally poking the ads. His screenshot examples seem fairly damning:
Although really, this is pretty similar to many ads I see elsewhere. In fact, oddly, I don’t see these ads in Words With Friends on my Nexus 7, and that app just updated.
Maybe they’re waiting to see how it works before it rolls out. It’s a bit unfortunate that Zynga is struggling, in the sense that a lot of good people work there and I know a few of them. And to be fair, the stock is a bit undervalued: Zynga still does quite well when it comes to Facebook games. It’s just unfortunate that yet again, it’s the employees taking the hit for a company being overvalued: Mark Pincus made $190 million in that stock sale he’s getting sued over.