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Zynga buys social browser Flock … or maybe just its engineering team

January 5, 2011 7:09 PM
Anthony Ha
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Social Web browser Flock just announced that it has been acquired by social gaming giant Zynga, confirming an earlier report in TechCrunch.

Chief executive Shawn Hardin wrote that the deal is a “perfect fit” and that “Flock will help Zynga in achieving their goal of building the most fun, social games available to anyone, anytime – on any platform.” (Zynga has built its massive audience on Facebook, but is now trying to diversify.)

The company’s browser allows users to access their social networks while browsing other websites. Hardin said Flock had 10 million users worldwide, which is a substantial audience, but not exactly a huge hit for a five-year-old company that raised about $30 million in venture funding. (Flock’s lack of success was one of the reasons to be skeptical when RockMelt, a browser with a similar concept, launched in November.)

Last week, I complained about “manquisitions”, where startups are “acquired” as a way to hire senior team members while the product is abandoned. Is this the first manquisition of 2011? TechCrunch suggests that it might be, because Zynga, Twitter, and Google were all trying to acquire the company’s engineering talent. Hardin is vague about the future of the Flock product: “We thank our users for their unwavering support and dedication. We’ll have more news about our products in the month ahead.“

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. This marks Zynga’s eighth acquisition in eight months. It last acquired mobile game company Newtoy. (Zynga CEO Mark Pincus is pictured above.)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XEB22A2ZUO5MRTD54MF36KC5NA James

    I want to know if March 1, 2011, going forward, is the product itself “Flock” living or dead?Please email the answer to masseyprod@yahool.com. Thanks. P.S. This was a great, great essay on the Zynga acquisition of Flock. Also, the “manquisition” concept draws the line on a specialized Mergers & Acquisition sub-category. This category has not been adopted by CNBC's coverage of Wall Street (13 hours a day, 5 days a week). In software engineering (or any high-end research and development based product-development team human talent) this is massively a smart business-development strategy. Although the discussion of peak performance human talent team formation has probably occurred since the dawn of group-warfare team formation, the herein invented formalization of this particular strategy is a singularity. An example of the concept in warefare literature could be George C. Patton AFTER the fall of the German Army and BEFORE the start or end of the Cold War: USA vs USSR. Patton said, “Give me the usage of this specific German Army team (such and such a battalion group, so to speak), and I'll take on and defeat the Soviet Army. In this case the prior “corporation” was the German Third Reich. In the Zynga Flock case the former “corporation” was owned by $30M of venture capital money. The next question is,”How smart is the design concept of how Zynga will apply this “battle hardened advanced capability world-class software engineering team” to a product in the Zynga venture?On this question, to push this envelope further (and invite useful comments on this matter) let us ask “What will Zynga do with the Engineering team it manquisitioned?” Commenters' Note: The 3 point answer and 5 point impact analysis has been redacted in that I want to found and lead the next big thing. The document is now owned by Just It Flick LLC

  • http://www.neunetz.com/2011/12/06/neunetzcast-2-excel-fuer-bilder/ neunetzcast #2: Excel für Bilder

    [...] Zynga buys social browser Flock … or maybe just its engineering team [...]

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