Bob Rice: Zynga's Success Shows That "Social And Mobile Are Everything"

Bob Rice of Tangent Capital Partners told Bloomberg TV that he agrees with the speculation that Zynga, the developer behind FarmVille, Mafia Wars, CityVille and other hit Facebook games, could be worth $7 to $9 billion. Rice has been very encouraged by the success of Zynga, whose $400 million profit (over the past three years) reinforces the idea that “social and mobile are everything.” The reason Zynga works, he says, is because it connects friends and it's addictive. In the long run, Rice said that he thinks that mobile could be a “serious problem” for Google GOOG, adding that mobile devices will exceed the sale of laptops. Further, he believes that users are no longer doing the type of searching that helped make Google a success. Microsoft MSFT, on the other hand, stands to benefit from the growth of mobile since it can leverage the power of its existing mobile offerings, such as Xbox Live, which Rice believes is an easy way to glean revenue from existing products. Interestingly, Rice does not believe that Facebook will be able to retain its dominance in the social networking space. As mobile platforms expand (along with mobile-native applications, which Facebook is not), he expects the social networking giant to lose market share. In the future, Rice believes that users will leave Facebook for more “focused” social networks. Granted, that doesn't mean that anyone is going to replace Facebook. But over time, Rice thinks that people will move around and create a more general, pervasive social network, rather than a single-entity-run social network like the current Facebook offering. Finally, Rice said that Facebook's advertising revenue is “not that impressive.”