By Andy Fixmer and Douglas Macmillan - Dec 7, 2011 12:01 PM GMT+0700
Zynga Inc. has Alec Baldwin to thank for giving its “Words With Friends” word game a publicity boost.
Baldwin, star of NBC’s “30 Rock,” was so engrossed in the Scrabble-like game that he got ejected from an American Airlines flight for refusing to stop playing it on a mobile device.
“Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving,” Baldwin, 53, said in a post to Twitter Inc.’s microblogging service yesterday after the incident.
Zynga, which plans to sell shares in an initial public offering, is the biggest maker of games on Facebook Inc. Still, it’s less well understood by many of the investors targeted by its IPO marketing effort, currently under way, said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. Baldwin’s American Airlines flap may raise Zynga’s profile, he said.
“This is phenomenal for Zynga,” said Pachter, who’s based in Los Angeles. “The problem for Zynga with investors has been that the average portfolio manager doesn’t relate to their games. This definitely helps change their perception.”
Zynga took up Baldwin’s cause with Twitter posts featuring the phrase, “#LetAlecPlay.” “Words With Friends” is Zynga’s sixth most popular game, according to Appdata.com.
Baldwin was removed from a flight traveling to New York from Los Angeles, the actor said on his Twitter account. The airline said on Twitter that it’s investigating the incident. American Airlines parent AMR Corp. (AMR) filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors on Nov. 29.
‘Baldwin 1, American 0’
“He loves WWF so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it, but he has already boarded another AA flight,” Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Baldwin, said in a statement.
Adam Isserlis, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Zynga, declined to comment beyond the company’s posts on Twitter.
“Words With Friends” was created by Newtoy Inc., a McKinney, Texas-based game developer acquired by Zynga in December 2010. A version of the game with advertising is free on Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s AppStore, while a commercial-free version costs $2.99.
Zynga is seeking to raise as much as $1 billion in the biggest IPO by a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc.’s debut. The “Let Alec Play” graphic features a scoreboard saying, “A Baldwin 1, American Air 0.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net; Douglas Macmillan in New York at dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net; Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
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