Facebook, Zynga: We get along! Pinky swear!

The mood over at Farmville is less "Animal Farm" and more "Charlotte's Web"--or that's what the big tech companies involved would like us all to think.

In what may be the culmination of one of the past year's silliest Silicon Valley high-stakes playground games--or, perhaps more appropriately, barnyard games--social gaming giant Zynga and social network Facebook have put out a press release to announce that they are not, in fact, feuding. Actually, they've reached an agreement! For five whole years! In the name of all that is good and right in the world, I really hope people aren't as fanatically obsessed with Farmville and Mafia Wars in five years!

So here are the specifics, if you can call them specifics: "Facebook and Zynga announced today that they have entered into a five-year strategic relationship that increases their shared commitment to social gaming on Facebook and expands use of Facebook Credits in Zynga's games. The agreement provides a solid foundation for both companies to continue to work together to provide millions of people with a compelling user experience for social games."

No terms of the deal were disclosed, but this is an announcement weighted with backstory and backstabbing. Facebook, obviously, is huge, and one of the reasons that Facebook is so huge is that its developer platform gave people all sorts of new reasons to join and spend time there. One of the biggest companies to emerge on Facebook's platform was Zynga, which now has around 230 million monthly active users (Facebook has about 400 million).

But Facebook has repeatedly made changes to its developer platform that arguably haven't been in the best interest of companies like Zynga, the most recent of which is its Facebook Credits virtual currency. Downplayed in Facebook's last slew of developer-related announcements, Credits take a 30 percent cut of transaction revenues, and while they haven't been mandatory for app developers thus far (they haven't even launched in full) rumor has it that they will be.

Earlier this month, reports started to surface in TechCrunch that Zynga was so fed up that it was going to launch its own game network, called "Zynga Live," potentially preparing for a move off of Facebook altogether if it was forced to cough up the 30 percent cut of revenues. So if that happened, Facebook could start losing traffic from foaming-at-the-mouth Farmville players (Is the first item you receive a virtual raccoon? Does he bite you?) who spend hours on the site to tend to their "crops." Zynga would be fighting an uphill battle to replicate the expertly crafted social-networking channels that have made Facebook such an ideal platform for social games.

Plus, there is heaps of money at stake: Facebook's once-tepid revenues have been boosted by advertising dollars from companies like Zynga that want to increase their user base and advertise their Facebook presence. Zynga more or less mints money right now, thanks in part to the fact that people will actually pay for virtual tractors, or at least fill out offers and surveys in order to do so. Botching their relationship could be a big hit to either or both companies.

EVERYBODY PANIC!!

Tuesday's announcement gives some new insight into what must have been happening. There was something that smelled very strategic about the "sources close to the matter" whispering dirt to the press regarding Zynga's dissatisfaction with Facebook and hence making the boardroom disagreements public. But the official word is that everything's totally fine, and that the liaisons between the two companies should, in fact, be classified as a "long-term relationship."

I guess we've got five years to see which company wears the (virtual) pants in this one.

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Co-Op-Farming-in-FarmVille

Co-Op Farming in FarmVille

By Charles J. Allen

A new feature on FarmVille is Co-Op Farming. This feature teams you up with your neighbors to complete farming jobs for large amounts of coins, experience and three new ribbons. The faster your team finishes a job the better the rewards will be.

You will see a new button in the top left of your FarmVille control panel. Click on that to get started. There are three tabs on the right. All Jobs shows what jobs are available to start and which ones are available from your neighbors. The Active Jobs tab will show the progress you have made on jobs you have started or joined. The Job History tab shows your statistics for all the jobs you have participated in.

You can start a new job or join an existing job one of your neighbors has started by clicking on the green button that says Start or Join. A new window will open with a description of the job, the requirements and rewards you can earn. Each job has a time limit, so consider that and the time you need to plant and harvest the right crops for the job before joining a co-op project.

Each of the jobs has three different reward levels you can earn: Gold Silver and Bronze. You will receive the higher rewards the faster you complete a job. The Silver and Bronze medals will award coins and experience. The Gold Medal awards coins, experience and a special item. View the special item by placing your mouse over the gold trophy in the job description.

After you start a job you will be prompted to share the opportunity on your feed to invite friends and neighbors to join your CO-OP Farming project. Get as many friends as possible working on this to reach the goal as fast as possible. Each friend needs to seed his or her farm with the required crops AFTER you start the job or they join it. Crops planted before you started the job do not count towards the goal. When you harvest a crop that counts toward the goal a little bar will appear above your neighbor bar showing you the progress.

Once you complete a Co-Op Farming Job you will get a congratulations screen detailing your awards and what percentage of the work each member contributed. You will be able to share a 100 coin bonus on your feed for the first five neighbors to collect. If you don't complete the job on time you will get a Job Failed message. Don't worry you can try again. Happy Farming!

I'm an avid FarmVille player who likes to get the most out of my games. For more tips, tricks and hints go to http://www.hopehill.com.

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Facebook FarmVille Cheats Over Strategies - Can Cheats Ban You From Zynga?

Facebook FarmVille Cheats Over Strategies - Can Cheats Ban You From Zynga?

By Michelle S Garcia

FarmVille has become one of the most popular online games in the recent time. With 75.2 million active users and over 18.1 million fans this game is all about farming - Plough, Planting, Harvesting, managing livestock and purchasing variety of decorations for your plot. With Zynga, the founder of FarmVille, becoming a partner of the popular social networking site called Facebook; this game has spread like a wild fire amongst the gamers all over the world.

With a challenging environment amongst your neighboring friends, whom you can simply add up using Facebook or just via e-mail addresses, the main intention infused is

how to cross the game levels faster by collecting FarmVille coins and cash. Thus this intention has led to the need for FarmVille cheats which unfortunately doesn't exist.

In the first instant as you start playing the game you will be readily provided with a 16*16 farm with 6 ploughed land and some cash to buy the seeds to plant on those plots.

The seeds are to be bought from the Market place. Initially you will only be able to buy some selected seeds and other items like animals, trees and decorations among the huge options in the Market place. Now as you move up in the game level it will unlock more items and seeds. Thus the Market place is dependent on the game level. But the game level is dependent on the experience that you earn while farming and purchasing items.

So the gamers are looking all over the internet for FarmVille cheats to take undue advantage over others. Instead, if they can simply understand the game and play it with some strategy then things will work out without the use of FarmVille cheats.

TRICK - Gaining experience can be done with buying Hay bale followed by selling it which will cost you 95 FarmVille coins and you can earn 5 experiences. Thus each experience is costing you only 19 FarmVille coins. Thus if you have 100,000 FarmVille coins in your bag then you can get 5000+ experience at any instant.

Thus you can see that without the use of any FarmVille cheats you can get experiences for rising up your game level. On the bottom are some of the best resources particularly containing these type of strategies to play this game of FarmVille efficiently. How to farm, what to farm, collecting FarmVille coins and cash, understanding the game point-to-point basis has been vividly encrypted in a step by step guidance for our online farmers.

Remember guys, if there is such cheats available I recommend not attempting it as Zynga will quickly crawl up on these cheats. Zynga can ban your account according to an IP address. Every device connected to the public Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address can often be used to identify the region or country from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. In other words Zynga will completely block you from their system from that particular computer and other devices that are linked to that same IP address.

Visit The FarmVille Secrets website to discover the best kept secret tactics you can use to unlock/achieve more rare items, coins and a million dollar villa in a short amount of time without the use of any cheat codes.

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