Zynga: Online gambling “very interesting.”

INTERNET gambling could be seeing the light if speculation is anything to go by. Zynga recently revealed that they are searching for partners in online gambling; their move towards the plan has been strengthened when Zynga COO John Schappert said online gambling is “very interesting” in a conference call.

In the call with analysts, in response to a question about online gambling, Schappert said,”I think it’s actually a very interesting opportunity, because we’re in a unique position. We have the world’s largest online poker game and the most social online poker game we’ve been running for four years. We had record results last quarter. And it’s one of the top six games on Facebook. So I think we’re in a very good position and it’s a category that’s interesting to us.”

The main hurdle to overcome is the legislation issues facing the U.S.
Other notes from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus‘conference call with analysts as reported by Forbes:

•Zynga has grown its mobile user base to 15 million daily active users, which is up five-fold from a year ago.
•On the international front, Zynga doubled its international revenue year-over-year, through increased localization. Its games are now available in 17 languages compared to five languages a year ago.
•In terms of individual game performance, Zynga’s new game Mafia Wars 2 came in below expectations but its new Ville franchise game CastleVille performed better than expected. Mafia Wars 2 “didn’t resonate as well with consumers,” Pincus said.
•The company’s Z Cloud, its own cloud infrastructure, was by the end of the year managing nearly 80% of the company’s daily active users, up from 20% in the beginning of the year.