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No, https://www.zynga.com/blogs/ca...

Has anyone seen actual, solid numbers from any business that prove that these marketing channels were worth the investment? If so, for what type of business?

http://www.zynga.com/

There are plenty of people out there who WILL outright steal your great idea. Just because the original author won't and has a personal hang-up about NDAs (he feels "untrusted".. what a nonce), doesn't mean NDAs are a bad idea. Most people don't care about signing an NDA. It's a regular part of the software business. Many, many times in my personal experience, both parties EXPECT an NDA from the outset, and a project isn't considered serious without one. Some programmers won't even sign on unless they DO get to sign an NDA, or else they know it's going to be a waste of their time.

Very easy information to get:

Board of Zynga http://company.zynga.com/node/876:
Mark Pincus
Zynga CEO and Founder

Bing Gordon
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Partner

Brad Feld
Foundry Group Managing Director

Jeffrey Katzenberg
CEO of DreamWorks Animation

John Schappert
Director and Chief Operating Officer

Owen Van Natta
Director and Chief Business Officer

Reid Hoffman
LinkedIn founder and Executive Chairman

Stanley J. Meresman
Director

Investors: http://allthingsd.com/20110718/zynga-updates-ipo-filing-to-list-investors-and-googles-one-of-them/

"Here's the list of investors. I did not include all of the mutual fund holdings because there are dozens:

Google Inc.
SOFTBANK CORP.
DAG Ventures Limited
SB Asia Pacific Investments Limited
Digital Sky Technologies Limited
DST Global Limited
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Fenwick & West LLP
Institutional Venture Partners XII, L.P.
Union Square Ventures 2004, LP
Union Square Principals 2004, LLC
PG Ventures, Inc.
Foundry Venture Capital 2007, L.P.
F&W Investments LLC-Series 2007
Laird H. Simons, III
Theodore H. Pincus Declaration of
Trust Dated June 10, 1992
Archimedes Capital
Reid Hoffman
Paul Martino
The Dâ(TM)Anconia Trust
Peter Thiel
Avalon Ventures VIII, LP
Gary Leff
European Founders Fund GmbH & Co.
Kardinal--Faulhaber"

The terms of use are also very slimy

You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,

IANAL but isn't it the case that courts never uphold the validity of those kinds of causes in contracts? You can still do all those things, you'll just be in breach of contract (a contract you probably don't care about if you're filing or joining a class-action lawsuit).

So THATS why I get a weird feeling between my legs when I play Mafia Wars or FarmVille

That's just them pulling your private information from every source they can - they want your DNA. They say that they'll collect as much as they can in their privacy policy

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga, to supplement your profile.

This is in addition to the info they can suck out of your profiles on other sites like facebook

We may offer you the opportunity to submit other information about yourself (such as gender, age, occupation, hobbies, interests, zip code, etc.), or we may be able to collect that information from social networking systems on which you have used Zynga Games or SNS Apps

You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,

Their privacy policy also sucks - remember how facebook leaks your personal data - zynga admits it:

. We may offer you the opportunity to submit other information about yourself (such as gender, age, occupation, hobbies, interests, zip code, etc.), or we may be able to collect that information from social networking systems on which you have used Zynga Games or SNS Apps ...

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga, to supplement your profile.

Yes, zynga is a spyware business.

You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,

Their privacy policy also sucks - remember how facebook leaks your personal data - zynga admits it:

. We may offer you the opportunity to submit other information about yourself (such as gender, age, occupation, hobbies, interests, zip code, etc.), or we may be able to collect that information from social networking systems on which you have used Zynga Games or SNS Apps ...

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga, to supplement your profile.

Yes, zynga is a spyware business.

... the need for people to take these quizzes - especially on Facebook - What's your favorite cheese? Which celebrity are you? Does he like you? How Sexy Is Your Name? What Does Your Eye Colour Mean?Some of them are rather clever (RealAge) and yet also evil (RealAge). Okay, maybe not 'kill puppies' evil, but all of these are datamining personal information from the poor suckers that need a webpage to tell them if they're happy or that brown eyes means that they're mysterious. I've been warning folks about this kind of thing for years, to no avail. - Not all apps are trojan horses, but why be a market research tool?

It would be interesting to see an audit of companies like zynga ( http://www.zynga.com/ - zynga is a purveyor of web based games like Vampires, Texas Holdem, Scramble or YoVille on social networking sites such as facebook and myspace) - I'm certain that part of their revenue comes from "market research support". This is the new spam, and it's tricking the gullible into being it's corporate marketing test group.