Words With Friends can be more than just a fun scrabble type game you play with Friends, it could be the very technology that saves your life one day. At least that was the case for an Australian man who was diagnosed with a life threatening condition.

Australian resident Georgie Fletcher and American wordsmith Beth Legler met several years ago through the gaming platform and began a friendship through the Words With Friends chat screen. Recently Mrs. Fletcher began to describe her sick husbands symptoms when Beth’s husband Larry, a physician, told Georgie to rush her husband immediately to the hospital.

It turns out that Simon Fletcher had a 99% blockage near his heart that would have led to certain death had he not been taken immediately to the emergency room. read more

Zynga on Thursday announced the release of their newest game in the “With Friends” category, Scramble With Friends.

The announcement comes just one day after the company released Hidden Chronicles and marks the company’s determination to hit 2012 running after December met their IPO with skepticism and with shares in the company currently hovering around the $9 mark.

Zynga added to their “With Friends” category last year when they released “Hanging With Friends” a hangman type game that combines social gaming with friends.

Scramble isn’t actually a new offering for Zynga, they released a Facebook Scramble game as one of their earliest titles, it was eventually downloaded by 2.5 million Facebook users. However the new offering brings the game to the masses. As the name suggests users must find words from a Scrambled group of letters, the higher the word count the higher the score. read more

Social gaming firm Zynga on Friday filed IPO documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that places the company’s initial price per share between $8.50 and $10.

If that pricing is met the company will have raised between $850 million and $1.15 billion with a total company evaluation of $7 billion.

Those numbers are no small amount, however the company that has created such viral hits as FarmVille, CityVille, and MafiaWars believes they are worth nearly half the valuation of the world’s largest gaming company Activision Blizzard ($14.2 billion).

While $7 billion may seem like a high amount for a relatively new gaming company it should be noted that before pulling their original IPO due to fears of market volatility the company’s valuation was believed to be closer to $10 billion.

While some analysts have mixed feels about Zynga, it’s believed that by selling such a large percentage of the company’s worth during their IPO (14.3% to be exact) they may be able to lessen that volatility. read more

Social game developer Zynga on Monday announced the release of Lighthouse Cove a new expansion pack for their highly popular FarmVille platform.

According to the company, players to Lighthouse Cove are tasked with rebuilding a coastal area after a gigantic storm wipes everything out. Using the games platform users can plant crops, erect new buildings and even make their destination a getaway spot by adding in a bed and breakfast while creating culinary dishes for town guests.

The expansion pack is available to users who have made it past level 15 of the standard FarmVille platform. Users at that level will also see a bunch of additions including river otters, duroc pigs, raspberry wine and super maple trees. read more

THQ has been busy at work creating Margaritaville Online a take on singer Jimmy Buffett’s popular 1977 hit song of the same name. The move allows THQ to release a social game that piggybacks on the popularity of the “Ville” name which has been popularized by social gaming company Zynga thanks to CityVille, FarmVille and even GagaVille without actually infringing on any type of copyright issues since Margaritaville has been copyrighted for years. According to the company the game will release on Facebook and iOS devices this fall and will follow a storyline familiar to Buffet fans. THQ says the game will offer: read more

Zynga, maker of the popular Facebook game FrontierVille has announced that they are now using an in-game cameo to promote Johnny Depp’s upcoming game Rango which hits theaters this coming weekend.

Starting today, players are told to find Rango. Players must ask their friends for 10 water buckets and then view a trailer of the movie, at which point they will receive a Rango statue to put on their homestead.

The promotion of movies isn’t a new gesture on the part of Zynga, they have also promoted The Green Hornet and Megamind but at least this time the movie they are promoting fits in a little better with the time period of the games theme.

Promoting products via social media games is becoming increasing more lucrative, with 19 million people actively playing FrontierVille, an estimated 9 million people took part in the Megamind promotion alone, a number equal or greater to the number of individuals who would have seen a commercial for the movie during primetime broadcast of a popular TV show. read more

Zynga has purchased company number 8 in less than one year, announcing today the acquisition of Flock a “social web browser” organization.

Flock launched in 2005 and allows users to move seamlessly between their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn statuses via a sidebar. The social browser also features link-sharing features and a “Social Search” option where users can track their friends conversations based on various topics.

While the cost of the acquisition is not known at this time, we do know it was largely a talent buy with the Flock team joining the Zynga team moving forward.

Company CEO Shawn Hardin wrong about the acquisition on the official Flock blog: read more

Zynga, makers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and FrontierVille have proven once again why they are the world’s largest social gaming company, announcing record signups for their newest Facebook game Cityville.

Cityville, the first game from Zynga to receive a global roll out attracted more than 290,000 people in the first day of wide release, that numbers compared to their previous record of 116,000 players in one day set by FrontierVille just several short months ago.

As the name would suggest, CityVille places players in charge of building and growing their own cities. The game also marks the first time in which friends can “franchise” businesses on their friends game board, allowing for more “social” interaction among players.

The franchise option is apparently so popular that within the first 24 hours nearly 25% of all players had franchised a business on their friends game boars.

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American Express and social gaming behemoth Zynga have entered into a business partnership that allows Amex customers to buy Zynga cash with their Amex Membership Rewards points.

The customers points can be used for game cards and virtual currency, while Zynga will also offer exclusive virtual goods to AMEX points customers for their products, including the very popular FarmVille social game.

The move is a smart one for Amex, allowing them to push their rewards points out for cheap to acquire virtual goods, while tapping into a customer base of 56 million social gamers in America alone.

While it’s still unseen how many AMEX customers will flock to the virtual goods, the market in 2009 reported more than $2.2 billion in virtual sales, with most of those sales coming from micro-payment company’s such as PayPal and through the use of major credit cards. read more