Former Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) executive, Ellen Siminoff, has been appointed to become Zynga, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s first ever woman to sit on its board of directors. Siminoff is also the CEO of the Educational publishing company, Shmoop University, and will also be joining the audit committee, CNET News noted.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus is quoted, pointing to Siminoff”s experience in operating web business, and her passion for consumer internet products, as one of the main reasons she became the first woman to sit on the social-game publisher’s board. The CEO also said, “Ellen has also been a longtime Words With Friends player with her family,and shares our mission to connect the world through games.”
Siminoff is a founding member at Yahoo!, and during her time at the web business pioneer, she served several roles including overseeing its entertainment and small-business division, the report notes. Additionally, Ellen also served as the CEO of Efficient Frontier, which is an advertising-technology company, acquired by Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) in January this year.
Zynga is focused on making game playing a social community by establishing deep connections between people. In a statement, Siminoff said, “I admire Zynga’s vision and I look forward to working with Mark and my fellow directors to leverage the company’s tremendous success, and extend its consumer facing platform for play even further.”
Zynga is not the first web based company to appoint a woman in its board of directors for the first time; it is less than a month, since Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) appointed Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at the social-media giant to join its board on July 2nd. While Facebook’s appointment could be attributed to intense criticism over diversity of representatives in the company’s board, it is unclear whether similar motives were behind Zynga’s move.
Siminoff”s new board mates include Pincus, the CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Reid Hoffman, William “Bing” Gordon, Sunil Paul, Owen Van Natta, Stanley J. Meresman, and John Schappert. She also sits on the boards of Journal Communications, Mozilla, Solarwinds, and U.S. Auto Parts Network, noted CNET News.
At the time of this writing, Zynga’s stock was trading at $4.56 per share. The company unveiled new features and figures at an event late last month as featured in one of our posts, whereby, various statistics with regard to the company’s operations were revealed.
Zynga Inc. Business Summary
Zynga Inc. develops, markets, and operates online social games as live services on the Internet, social networking sites, and mobile platforms. The company offers its online social games under the CityVille, Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CastleVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Word with Friends, Hidden Chronicles, Zynga Bingo, Scramble With Friends, Slingo, and Dream Heights names. Its games are available on various platforms, including Facebook and other social networks, as well as mobile platforms, such as Apple iOS and Google Android worldwide. The company was formerly known as Zynga Game Network Inc. and changed its name to Zynga Inc. in November 2010. Zynga Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
