Farmville, Frontierville, Fishville, Yoville, Petville – are just a few of the popular games that Zynga has developed into some of the world’s most popular social games.
You’ve probably heard of Farmville on Facebook and other games, but just how popular are these games. According to TechCrunch, just five weeks after launching Frontierville the game reached 20 million monthly users, with around 6 million active daily users.
Bottomline, if you own domain names ending with ‘ville’, you might want to hang onto them.
Petville.com was launched in 2009 by Zynga, and the company acquired the domain name Petville.com from its previous owners for an undisclosed amount. Visit Petville.com, and a message at the top of the site reads: ‘the content that was previously found at petville.com can now be found at ipawz.com’.
Though Zynga owns Petville.com, Farmville.com and other ville domain names, it doesn’t own Fishville.com – which saw a spike in traffic according to Compete when the site launched in November 2009. It appears Zynga and the owners of Fishville.com couldn’t come to an agreement, but Zynga is doing just fine – its Fishville game owns nearly all the top spots on Google, and the company does own the .net which it uses for the game’s home page.
2010 has seen only 1 publicly reported sale of a domain name ending in ‘ville’ – Cityville.com. The domain name sold for nearly $40,000 in June at Moniker. At the time of this story, the domain name is parked and registered to Rob Holmes of IP Cybercrime LLC – a company whose slogan is “Your Guys for Undercover Buys”.
About Zynga
“Every day millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our games, which range from harvesting plants to baking apple pies to playing poker. Zynga was founded in January 2007 by Mark Pincus and named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen.”
10 replies on “Got ‘ville’ in the domain? Zynga might come calling for the name with cash”
I own Avatarville.com. I actually purchased it for the purposes of making a gravatar type competitor but it hasn’t gotten to the top of my todo list. I don’t expect Zynga to come knocking or anything but there are plenty of uses for the name.
Is there a bigger ville then Nashville?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by terri mizaro, Domain Names. Domain Names said: Got ‘ville’ in the domain? Zynga might come calling for the name with cash http://goo.gl/fb/E7qpK […]
Thanks for the info. I have more than 50 ville names. Some examples are
Bagelville.com, Conferenceville.com, Connectionville.com, Drugville.com,
Electionville.com, Liveville.com, Opportunityville.com, Saveville.com,
Taxville.com.Televisionville.com, and Treeville.com.
I never really thought of Zynga acquiring them, but the ville ending is
definitely brandable. Just ask Jimmy Buffet who put ville on the map decades
before Zynga was created.
[…] from: Got 'ville' in the domain name? Zynga is connecting the world … Amazing Online Specials at […]
wow http://farmville.co/
see the amount of traffic it receives!!
[…] 2010, the domain name Cityville.com sold for $38,225 at Moniker. I stumbled upon the name when I wrote about Zynga last week and how the company has been buying up and developing ville-domains like Farmville.com and […]
[…] early November when I wrote about Ville-domains, Cityville.com was parked. The domain name had been purchased at Moniker in June for […]
[…] With Zynga’s latest Facebook game Cityville topping the charts as the most popular Facebook game in 2010, I thought I’d offer up a few predictions on Zynga’s next blockbuster game title in 2011. With Cityville, Farmville, and Frontierville numbering daily users in the millions, one can only guess what’s next for Zynga, like another game with “ville” in the title. […]
[…] by Zynga, is that the gaming company doesn’t own the domain name, patentville.com. But it wouldn’t be the first time Zynga doesn’t own the web address for one of its properties, as seen by the URL […]