EDIT: oh, and whose company essentially ripped off the idea of Farmville from someone else. Forgot about that one.
This was written a year before Zynga was formed. I still think he's hypocritical, but let's be clear about the context.
>> sells spyware (Zwinky toolbar)
I have no idea where you got this idea from. Zynga does not make Zwinky, Mindspark Interactive Network does.
>> highly profitable add-ons to games under the pretext of charity (Farmville "donations" to Haiti)?
A 50% charity split isn't shabby. Sure, Zynga should have given 100%, but there are higher profile initiatives with MUCH lower splits. Product (red) is a great example where buying a $150 iPod nets a whopping $10 for The Global Fund.
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Disclosure: Current Zynga employee.
But they need distribution, and they got that through Pincus - See: "I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues" : http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus...
> Product (red) is a great example where buying a $150 iPod nets a whopping $10 for The Global Fund.
You really can not compare the two. The BOM and cost of production on an iPod is probably $120. The incremental cost of a Farmville credit is thousands of a cent.
Point conceded, I didn't know about that.
> You really can not compare the two.
A fair comparison isn't far out of reach - Shazam (red) only donates 20% of its iPhone app sales. My point isn't about these specific deals, it's that charity-share deals aren't uncommon and a 50% share is above industry standard.
And for what it's worth, Zynga did spike their contributions to 100% after the earthquake hit. Through the sales of items in Farmville, they raised over $1.5M for earthquake relief, more than most NGOs, private companies, and countries.
Still, I find it a little ironic that he would later say things like, "I did every horrible thing in the book to get the revenues" -- paraphrasing since I don't recall the exact quote.
As far as the charity split is concerned, I agree 50% isn't bad in most cases. However, I imagine margins are essentially zip for Zynga in this case, whereas most charities that take a cut of donations do have high operating costs.
Not that innovative companies are inherently ethical, but I'd say using your market clout to squash competitors while blatantly stealing from them is at least ethically questionable.
But it does nothing to, as Jefferson would certainly point out, improve the human condition, to simply copy what someone else did and crush that someone else with your market dominance.
This is just plain evil.
Demonstrating, BTW, his own point - he too became an hypocrite that's capable of doing anything immoral in order to make more money, much like the HBS alumni he was criticizing.
Couldn't that be attributed to his company having a larger user base and more money than its competition?
But that doesn't make the means to attain continued success less evil.