rewardville Archives – Page 2 of 2

Elliot’s Blog, Fusible, get credit from AOL’s Games.com for breaking, then confirming Zynga Rewardville story

The bigger technology sites and mainstream blogs often take credit for breaking news stories, even though some of those news stories are on occasion reported by bloggers first.

That’s not the case with a recent breaking story that appeared on Domaining.com yesterday, in which Elliot Silver asked whether Zynga bought the domain name Rewardville.com.

It seems that AOL’s blog over at Games.com is giving credit to Elliot’s Blog and the blog here at Fusible for breaking, then confirming the rumor that Zynga has plans for Rewardville.

After reading Elliot’s story, in which he noted the domain was marked private and re-directed to rewards.zynga.com, I did some research and discovered that in fact, Zynga Inc. had filed for a European trademark back in December 2010 on the word “Rewardville”.

Alexander Armero, the Games.com blogger that wrote the story titled, “RewardVille: Zynga plans a mysterious rewards program”, had this to say:

Hot on the heels of CityVille, Zynga may already be planning another release: RewardVille. Today, Fusible confirmed rumors that Zynga has big plans for this mysterious reward program.

The speculation about RewardVille solidified into fact when it was discovered that Zynga had actually filed a trademark for RewardVille back in mid December. Not only that, but they paid $4,500 for the website: rewardville.com. Would you pay that much for a website you didn’t plan on using? I think we can definitely expect to hear a lot more about RewardVille in the future.

Alexander speculates that Rewardville could be used for a new Zynga Lotto, or maybe a new game entirely. Whatever the case, at the time of this story, Rewardville.com now resolves to a GoDaddy.com parked page.

AOL Games.com

If you’re a fan of Zynga, you should check out the blog over at Games.com. The writers at Games.com do some of the best coverage on Zynga’s social gaming properties, including Cityville.

Cityville.com sold for $38,000 in 2010 and is now Facebook’s most popular game of all-time.

According to AppData, Cityville is expected to top over 100 million monthly active users by the end of this week.

Proof that Zynga has plans for Rewardville: Trademark application filed in Europe

Rumor over on Elliot’s Blog is that Zynga, the popular social game development company, purchased the domain name Rewardville.com, possibly for a rewards program that was announced back in late November in a Zynga Press Release.

Being a big fan of Zynga, I did a little digging on the name Rewardville.

While the domain name, which recently sold through Sedo for $4,500, is privately registered and redirects to rewards.zynga.com as Elliot Silver noted in his story, here’s what I did find out that no other technology site or blog has reported.

Zynga filed for Trademark in Europe for word: Rewardville

In mid-December, Zynga Inc. filed for a European trademark that went unnoticed.

The trademark application can be found here, by typing the term “rewardville” in the trademark name search field.

Though Zynga’s ultimate plans for Rewardville are not known at this time, chances are it’ll end up being an online resource and directory of rewards programs offered between Zynga and its partners.