Mike Isaac

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Mark Pincus on Zynga’s Symbiotic Relationship With Facebook (Video)

Zynga’s road to succes owes much to Facebook — the social giant has been by far the largest driver of traffic to Zynga’s gaming platform. And as Zynga CEO Mark Pincus noted at our D: All Things Digital conference, Facebook remains the platform of choice in driving traffic.

“We grew the fastest with Facebook,” Pincus said. “And as we saw their platform becoming better and better. … We kept doubling down.”

So over the course of Zynga’s evolution from start-up to publicly traded company, Pincus says his company grew more and more reliant on Facebook, with the lion’s share of Zynga’s gaming business focused on the social network.

But there’s an elephant in the room that Pincus danced around throughout the interview with Kara Swisher: Zynga’s continual “doubling down” on Facebook over time can be seen as a reliance on the company. And as Facebook recognized in its S-1 filing earlier this year, Zynga makes up more than 12 percent of Facebook’s overall revenue.

So while the two companies seem to rely on one another heavily, it’s unclear how much that will continue to be the case in the future.

Pincus, though, remains cagey on distancing his company too far from the social giant. “We’ve never thought in terms of attachment and detachment from Facebook,” he said.

Mobile, however, seemed to be the direction in which Pincus wanted to move. “We see Facebook as a platform, just like we see iOS and Android as platforms. “Mobile lets you play in your cab or on the train. And it’s growing very quickly.”

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