Zynga to distribute social games on Yahoo

Expanding beyond Facebook, Zynga to reach out to 600 million global Yahoo users

Zynga announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Yahoo to expand its growing list of popular social games through Yahoo's 600 million people-strong global network.

As Zynga games roll out to the Yahoo network in the coming months, users will find that they will be able to access games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars (though neither company has said which games will be hosted) across many of Yahoo's properties, including the homepage, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and others.

"Yahoo is focused on providing compelling, personally relevant experiences and social games are core to this experience," said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president, Yahoo! Americas. "Zynga will bring top notch social game experiences to Yahoo!, including through our open platforms such as Yahoo! Application Platform and Yahoo! Updates."

Today's announcement comes just a little over a week after Zynga and Facebook announced a new five-year partnership. That deal was the culmination of a push-and-pull between the two companies; Zynga had not been happy with the 30% cut Facebook takes from Credits users spend on in-game virtual goods.

Somehow their new relationship resolves that issue, but because details are still scarce, no one knows exactly how yet.

Either way, Zynga clearly has the right idea in expanding its product to properties beyond Facebook's domain, if it wants to be bigger and more notable than it already is. Zynga currently claims more than 230 million monthly active users worldwide, most of which come from Facebook.