In my presentation last week, I concentrated on online gaming, which included covering Zynga. Zynga is the largest and most well-known developer of Facebook game applications. With hits like Farmville and Mafia Wars impressing dozens of brands to invest in them, Zynga is making large profits and ensuring their future financial viability. Yet, they are still trying to maximize their profits by selling user information to third parties. Not surprisingly, these sales have caused lawsuits and other troubles for the company.
In this article by Coffee Today, it discusses the latest major lawsuit against Zynga. This class-action lawsuit is by a group of people who had their information sold by Zynga to third parties. Interestedly, Zynga is not worried about their legal troubles, and seem to shake it off like it’s no big deal.
Is Zynga entirely wrong by doing this? Sure, they definitely should be more open to the fact that users’ information is being sold, but should users really expect the game to be entirely free? After all, Zynga should be able to make a profit somehow. Although people are worried that the information could end up in the wrong hands, this information will most likely be used for advertisements and nothing worse, and advertisements that are targeted directly from the users’ information will most likely be integral in the future of Internet surfing. As long as the information is going towards better targeted online advertisements, I think that it is acceptable for Zynga to profit from their non-paying users if they accept to the terms and conditions.
What do you guys think?
The idea of selling private information to third party users for a profit is sickening. Zynga is making enough money from people by adding their games as applications to popular networking sites like Facebook.
ReplyDeletePeople use these games on sites like Facebook as a way to connect with friends and other gamers, and unknowingly trust these sites. I think it is unfortunate that Zynga takes advantage of these consumers, but I also think Facebook has some responsibility when it adds theses applications to make its users more aware of the potential "dangers"
I agree, companies shouldn't be allowed to sell information but it's interesting because I feel like people brush it off a lot more and excuse it. I understand it's "out of our control" but it's still creepy. I hate that gmail gives me advertisements based on key words in my emails. That's off-putting enough, I don't need some guy in California to have my credit card number too.
ReplyDeleteI think what really scares people is the term "private information". To Zynga, private information is your name, birthday, interests, and your friends list. They really just want to make sure that advertisements are well targeted so that gift ideas come up around your friends birthdays. I know it still may not be comforting, but trust me, if there was anything about credit card information being sold, I would be plenty worried as well.
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