Zynga Inks Major Yahoo Partnership

Zynga has dominated the Facebook platform, and now the social gaming giant is turning its eye elsewhere on the web with a major partnership with Yahoo. The deal will place Zynga's games, like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, throughout Yahoo's network in the coming months. This includes not only Yahoo's Games portal, but in user mail and messaging accounts, and even on the Yahoo homepage. Zynga games will also integrate with Yahoo's proprietary application platform, an OpenSocial container that lets third-party developers make Yahoo games and applications. Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider notes that the company "will also continue to work with other partners, developers and publishers to bring compelling innovations and experiences from across the web to our users.” Zynga's titles are best-known on the Facebook platform, although Facebook's proposed universal currency system for all games on its platform caused tensions between the two companies. These seemed to resolve just recently with a new five-year agreement between the two companies.