Facebook is on course to earn $1 billion in revenue this year from social gaming and most of that revenue will come from advertising, but some also includes the sale of Facebook Credits, which allow users to buy items for games on the social network. It is backed up by Zynga Inc’s Friday filing for a $1 billion initial public offering with $235 million in revenues for the first quarter of 2011………..
Facebook will generate an estimated $1 billion in revenue from social gaming this year and this revenue will come from advertising, but some will come from Facebook Credits, the social network’s currency for purchasing content on the site. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is declining to comment. Kevin Ryan, a leading Internet entrepreneur and former chief executive of online advertising giant DoubleClick, made the prediction in an interview with Reuters this week. Ryan’s brother, Sean Ryan became director of gaming partnerships at Facebook in early 2011 and the two likely share information on a regular basis. Facebook is a private company and so it doesn’t have to disclose financial information. The company is going public next year, possibly as soon as Q1 2012. The website’s initial public offering (IPO) could be very high, given that its valuation has been predicted to top $100 billion. Zynga, the dominant developer of social games on Facebook, just filed for an IPO and the number is $1 billion. Zynga reported that its 2010 revenue was $597 million, compared to $121 million for 2009, and 19 million for 2008.
