Zynga Real Money Online Gaming in the Headlights

Facebook has been the giant horse that Zynga rode for years to grow their player base but on Thursday, March 1st, Zynga made the announcement that it is launching Zynga.com. Users will now be able to find their favorite games without going to Facebook.

Zynga's proprietary platform will feature Zynga Poker along with its other popular games - look for it to go live later this month.

"It's our hope that our Platform partners, and eventually anyone in the industry, can extend the reach of their games and connect to even more players on Zynga.com," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus reported in a blog post. "Later this year we'll make our platform available for all social game developers through a Zynga API."

Zynga Poker is the biggest online poker game in the world and boasts more than 30 million monthly players. At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference Pincus said, "I think it's a good natural fit."

There is talk of Zynga looking around to form an alliance with a major casino in the coming months and the integration of real money gambling into social games is the goal once U.S. regulation takes place.

"We're definitely talking to all of the players that you would suspect," Pincus said. "We have incredible respect and admiration for brands and groups like the Wynn. I would expect that you'll see a lot of these players kind of figure out their go-to-market partnerships for sure before the end of this year."

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