On: Zynga: forget games, let’s just do viruses

[meritt]

A very substantial portion of Facebook's revenue is derived from Zynga customers buying virtual currency -- FB takes a 30% commission of every dollar redeemed into Facebook Credits.

While it obviously needs to be remedied for the benefit of user-experience FB also has shareholders who want to continue to see positive revenue gains.

[eric-hu → meritt]

I was somewhat skeptical of this claim, so I did some googling.

TLDR: FB made about 10% of its 2011 revenue, $4270 M, from Facebook Credits, $470 M.

Their projected 2012 revenue is $5042 M, of which $811 M is expected to come from 'Facebook Payments and other revenue'.

This doesn't say how much of that revenue comes from Zynga specifically, though

Sources:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/20/facebook-revenue-2011/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/08/30/poof-1-bill...