MoneyVille: Zynga Files for IPO, Looks to Raise $1 Billion

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San Francisco-based Zynga, makers of that game on Facebook you don’t play but you always see the weirdos you’re barely even friends with talking about how they found a wicker basket full of baby ducks, has just filed for an IPO. The company is hoping to raise $1 billion.

That’d be a mighty big haul, but with all the “crazy” IPO activity happening lately, it might not be that crazy to see a company that sells virtual goods hand over fist to a market of potential customers estimated to be 750 million people strong go big like that.

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In the filing, Zynga claims its games are played by people in 166 countries, with 60 million active users per day at a combined total of 2 trillion minutes spent playing the games daily.

The games—which include titles such as FarmVille, CityVille, FrontierVille and Empires & Allies—are free to play but sell virtual goods to players who wish to advance within the games more quickly. Farmville launched in 2009 and “quickly became the most popular social game on Facebook,” according to the filing. Zynga took in just shy of $600 million in revenue last year.

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