I’ve been closely watching the frequency of social interactions that Zynga, the makers of Mafia Wars and several other popular titles put into the game.

It’s really incredible when you see all of the different ways that they have users interact.  Consider this:

In a world where social media gets chastised all the time about the same things the early web did (Will it make money?) – it’s incredible that we don’t read more about Zynga.

In FaceReviews’ interview with Mark Pincus, Mark makes a great point in utilization of Facebook as a platform for social gaming.  You may wish to reconnect with old friends or acquaintances, but where do you take it from there? Once you’ve caught up on each other’s lives, will you just go your separate ways? Perhaps, but that’s part of where social gaming fits in.  You can communicate with them by playing games together.

Businessweek reports Zynga brings in close to $100 million in annual revenue.

David Berkowitz, friend and fellow Mafia Wars addict (I hear he is also Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy for 360i when he’s not playing) can attest to Zynga’s success with Mafia Wars:

“I think what’s great with Zynga here is that you either buy your way to the top – like getting godfather points to have a huge mafia and buy lots of weapons – or you have to play your butt off and thus rack up ad impressions.  Either way Zynga wins bigtime.”

Related posts:

• Zynga leaves Yahoo Games in the dust, becomes No. 1 in online games (games.venturebeat.com)
• Zynga is the #1 App Developer on Facebook (sociableblog.com)
• Social Game Developers Spending Millions on Facebook Advertising (insidefacebook.com)
• Inside Zynga (feld.com)
• How the Mafia conquered social networks (news.cnet.com)
• Mafia Wars Marriage Proposal (thegongshow.tumblr.com)