FarmVille’s Parent Company Valued at $1 Billion?

I have students and colleagues (yes, colleagues) that are literally addicted to these Facebook-based games. I don't understand the attraction of Mafia Wars, Farmville or Fishville, but clearly there's money to be made. Great parody video after the jump.

FarmVille’s Parent Company Valued at $1 Billion?

While some of us might be willing to pay to make Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars go away, it appears that Wall Street has other ideas.

Specifically, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities tells Bloomberg that ‘If the IPO [for Zynga] were timed to price around mid-2010 or later, our expectation would be for a billion dollar or greater valuation.’[emphasis added - MQ]

That number is based on the recent deal that Electronic Arts made to acquire Playfish for up to $400 million, a multiple of 3-4x its revenue according to another analyst cited in the report.

Insanity? Perhaps, but Zynga has shown no signs of slowing down and seems to be able to replicate the same concept over and over again successfully. The company recently introduced ‘FishVille,’ an underwater version of the FarmVille game, and today, launched FarmVille.com, a destination site for the game that utilizes Facebook Connect.

Overall, the company says it now has a whopping 200 million monthly active users across all games and platforms.