The recently funded Zynga gaming network is opening its network to third-party game publishers and developers. Per Adam Ostrow's post on the company earlier this month, Zynga is doing quite well for itself in the social networking application arena, with a reported 700,000 daily active users for its Facebook application games. From Texas Hold 'Em to Blackjack, Zynga's gaming network has been able to take advantage of Facebook's own developers platform.
Now, Zynga is extended that access to third-party publishers and developers, in order to get more games across social networks, including Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Meebo, with support for MySpace on the way. As I anticipated after the announcement of Google's Open Social, the centralized approach to providing aggregated tools that will help facilitate the publishing of applications across multiple networks is being achieved through programs such as the one Zynga is offering now.
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It's an interesting way for third-party developers to in fact minimize the need to always worry about which network to develop for, and how to market for each individual network as well. The most prominent place we've seen such a model enforced is with advertising networks that have looked specifically to social networking platforms and their developers and publishers.