Zynga Lost Another 27 Million Players Before CIO Debra Chrapaty Quit

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Debra Chrapaty,
Zynga'sZNGA
Chief Information Officer, has left the company.
Unlike
others who have left the firm
, Chrapaty has already secured her next gig: she will become the new CEO of Nirvanix, an enterprise-class cloud storage firm. Nirvanix's clients include
IntelINTC
,
DellDELL
and
IBMIBM
. The company raised
more than $25 million
last year in a Series C round led by Khosla Ventures. Before Zynga, Chrapaty worked for a number of high-profile corporations, including an SVP gig with
CiscoCSCO
and a corporate VP job at
MicrosoftMSFT
. She also once served as the President and COO of
E*Trade Technologies
ETFC
. In an e-mail to
AllThingsD
, Chrapaty said that she had a "great run" at Zynga and wishes the company and its team the best. "But this is a really unique opportunity to leverage a company that is at the center of unstoppable trends (to cloud which hasn't really affected Fortune 1000 storage yet) and a company that already has some great existing people and customers and investors you have known for decades," she said. In the weeks before Chrapaty announced her departure, Zynga lost more than 20 million MAUs (monthly active users). According to
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AppData
statistics, Zynga currently maintains 109.9 million MAUs -- down from
137.7 million MAUs
during the week of February 5, 2013. This is not the first time that Zynga has lost a significant number of recurring players. The company lost
23 million users
in 20 days last December, adding to the firm's
daily declines
. Zynga has responded to these setbacks by
terminating nearly a dozen
underperforming games. The company also
eliminated 100 jobs
as it attempted to reduce the growing losses. Based on
AppData's numbers
, things are not about to get any better. Eleven of the top 20 games are currently experiencing a decline in MAUs. Only eight of them enjoyed a gain today. The rest stayed the same. Earlier this week Zynga announced that it may implement a
greater number of game-pausing ads
that cannot be skipped. This could be how the company hopes to recoup the $150 that it loses on
every new paying customer
. While Zynga experienced a number of corporate losses in 2012 (and at least one more in 2013), the company reportedly made one new hire this week: Atul Bagga. According to
AllThingsD
, Bagga (formerly an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets) will join Zynga as the new VP of finance.
Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis@benzingapro.com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ
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Posted In: NewsManagementTechAtul BaggaDebra ChrapatyZynga
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