Zynga CEO: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/

by transburgh • 17 years ago

29 14 17 years ago

catch23• 17 years ago

why does this keep showing up here? the last posting was flagged and eventually removed...

transburgh• 17 years ago

maybe the people that did not read it last night (now that it is lower on the main list) are reading it for the first time. Some people don't live on YC News.

Since (at the time I write this) 11 people have up-voted it, there is interest in the story

byrneseyeview2• 17 years ago

It's hard to get accurate data on this, but I wonder how many startups avoid doing morally edgy stuff at the beginning. Reddit used fake accounts; Kevin Rose reviewed Digg on his TV show and submitted affiliate links; Google and Yahoo! used Stanford servers; eBay told anybody who would listen a completely fabricated story about the company started.

Obviously, none of that stuff is as bad as Zynga's scam ads (or Myspace's wrinkle creams and spyware). But is that because Zynga was evil, or because they didn't get around to stopping until they were too visible?

zaidf2• 17 years ago

I am pretty sure many many founders, if not the startups necessarily, have very 'interesting' pasts.

I definitely do and it goes back to high school. But I make it a point not to post about it online primarily because not understanding the context, it can be spinned many ways. I don't mind talking about it offline when I have time to tell the whole story from my mouth.

dabent2• 17 years ago

One could say that Google did and continues to promote a variety of scam offers through AdWords/Sense. They've tried to clean things up, or at least move the small players out with quality score, page 1 pricing, etc, but the real results show: http://www.google.com/search?q=acai+berry&pws=0

The second result when I searched was "www.CNN.com" What you want to bet that it really isn't CNN but some scam site? These clicks cost about $3 or more a pop, so Google is still making big money off of rebills.

byrneseyeview2• 17 years ago

That CNN site is hilarious:

http://www.cnnhealthonlinereports.com/news/dieting/acai-berr...

I'm amazed that this works. (But clearly, if they can afford to pay for the second highest search result, it does.) The article goes straight from a slightly newsy story (CNN investigates scams) to a pitch, complete with product screenshots and a list of benefits. Reminds me of: http://www.infomarketingblog.com/images/Mark_Haroldsen.jpg

dabent2• 17 years ago

In terms of money, those acai products have made millions. It's a feeding frenzy probably bigger than ringtones.

I'm amazed that it "works" in that Google allows this to show up. Putting a different display domain than the desitnation is a clear violation of policy. It's also amazing that CNN hasn't found them and shut them down.

I guess what I see with the Zynga thing is a bit of selective outrage. It's been happening EVERYWHERE with the biggest players in the game for years.

Speaking of CNN, even they run ads for fake blogs and "advertorials" with what look like scam offers. Where's the TechCrunch article about them?

wallflower• 17 years ago

When Julie Aigner-Clark founded Baby Einstein and started shooting her edutainment videos in her basement, she never worried about licensing the Einstein name. She just went ahead and did it. Many years later, they settled the name licensing dispute with Albert Einstein's estate, paying them considerable royalties.

True entrepreneurship involves risk taking. You can't plan for everything and you can't wait.

zaidf2• 17 years ago

I agree with you. Yet is it wise to go talking about something stupid? I'm not sure. Big corps already know this. The Valley might be learning. In the big scheme of things this might not be a huge deal, but as this story is spinned, it might give the image that Zynga's revenue is 100% scam, when in fact it might be 10% of 20% scammy.

I have something stupid I did in my past. I don't talk about it for the same fear as having to take heat like this dude is taking. I've actually written about it a couple times only to delete the post minutes later.

Seeing this play out, I feel I made the right decision. Otherwise, you never know when a competitor of yours will find that lil post and try and spin a huge negative story out of something that happened years ago in my teens and is hardly relavant. This might be a good lesson for startup CEOs on controlling their mouths even at the risk of coming across as a suit.

Btw, another great example is to read up the MySpace story in the book Hacking MySpace. Their parent company was deep into spyware business and pretty much that is what helped pay the bills. It also almost killed the myspace acquisition.

fnid2• 17 years ago

There's also a huge debate about the validity of her claims. Not only did she not care about using the name, but she doesn't care much about the efficacy of her product.

dkarl• 17 years ago

True entrepreneurship involves risk taking.

The disapproval directed toward this guy is not because he gambled and lost. It's because he scammed people. It was wrong. If he had flown below the radar and become rich and successful, and later moved to a more respectable business strategy, it would have still been wrong. How did you read the discussion of this issue and misunderstand? Do you think all the moral disapproval expressed here is a sham? That we are just dumping on a loser and would have applauded him if he got away with it?

fnid2• 17 years ago

He also says in the video that he got investors who were friends, which is revealing as well.

staunch• 17 years ago

"Behind every great fortune there is a great crime". Obviously that isn't true, but I'm shocked no one has written a book that details the shady beginnings of famous silicon valley startups. There's more than enough material.

One of my favorites is MySpace, when they were still called eUniverse/ResponseBase.

emmett• 17 years ago

A common quote from balzac, inaccurate though. The real version is:

“The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been discovered, because it was properly executed.”

http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/epigrammatic_accumu...

(please excuse the marxism)

Zynga CEO: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues”

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