Zynga And Facebook: A Dangerously Close Relationship

I’ve posted a short piece at Forbes.com on the possibility there’s more to the relationship between Zynga and Facebook than has been disclosed so far. There’s a mutuality of interests that goes beyond Facebook’s role as a host for Zynga’s games and the possible highest use of both firms’ platforms – online gambling.

Both companies treat each other as a customer for accounting purposes and that makes counting the money and revenues from advertising especially difficult. There’s a history of revenue recognition manipulation cases where a strong relationship between two companies  – one dominant  – makes it easy to fake revenues for both. Zynga is practically a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook.  At some point I think it will be, probably to actualize an online real-money gaming strategy.

Read more at Forbes.com.