Love this. I think the most important thing outlined here is understanding your objectives when you go to launch. A lot of people just do it, and think that the main objective is getting the product out the door.

Exactly. Once you really understand that it's way easier to have everything else fall into place.

How did you get the formatting like that?

Edit: please don't downvote, just asking a question

Double-space and then it's ASCII time. And I pasted the results from a wire service.

You don't need to double space -- you need to prepend each line with 4 spaces

    Like
    This

Edit: downvote? really? What was incorrect about the statement?

Considering Zynga has $1.2Bn in cash on hand, I'm surprised they haven't already bought a gambling company outright by now

That sounds great but last I checked they where still burning money fairly quickly.

You checked wrong- they've been profitable for a while now.

Umm, in there own words there not profitable:

http://investor.zynga.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=695419

Quarter ended June 30, 2012 Revenue $332,493, Net income (loss) ($22,811)

6 months ending June 30, 2012 Revenue: $653,465 Net income (loss): ($108,162)

You might say it's a positive trend and there losses are decreasing, but they had some profits last year that are 1/10th their current losses.

I suppose it depends if you're looking at the GAAP(negative) or non GAAP earnings(positive). I'm not sure which one tells the truth, but most press sources seem to cite a positive EPS of $0.01. In any case, this is not really a company that's hemorrhaging money.

This was inevitable imo. FarmVille and other popular Facebook "games" were really just going after the same dopamine triggers as casino games.