Im not sure which is best: the fact this is Arrington back to his original best again and doing good journalism/editorial.

Or that Zygna have sat up and taken notice to fix this.

Score 2 I think!

Both. Arrington gets a bad rap, but I think he's an all right guy with a good heart and the best intentions.

When he does real investigative stories (like this one), he is as powerful as the best of the old newspaper / TV investigative journalists.

When he does Silicon Valley gossip, he gets clicks but no action.

I'll second that. I think TechCrunch just grew too quickly and he wasn't prepared for it. It now seems like he's getting things more under control starting around the time they got their new office.

I saw a video with him in it and someone asked about advertising on TechCrunch and he said flat out, "I don't recommend it, your money is better spent elsewhere."

I thought that was nice.

Everyone knows Im not a huge fan; but I think you've hit the nail on the head. He's definitely growing on me again.

Let's not heap on the praise too quickly for Zynga. Let's wait till we see some actual change first.

Good PR lesson: even if you're a fucked up company and someone calls you out on it, if you admit the problem and take proper steps quickly people will likely forgive you and perhaps even like you for it.

Not to detract from the overall positive response by Mark, but if you make over $100MM/year partially by scamming young people (even if it's indirectly), giving less than one half of one percent of that to charity doesn't make it OK.

Shoddy Journalism. And I'm tired of it. Really Shoddy Journalism.

Zynga was actively recruiting on top tier campuses for product managers before this story came out. The job is still on their website. The Job is on their website, but like any company, they want to have a good applicant pool.

I really don't understand how some of these scams can be even considered legal. And it's everywhere. I see the Jamster and other ringtone commercials all the time, and always wonder about how many hundreds of thousands of kids they fool into subscribing to a monthly $5 plan when all they wanted to do was get Lil' Wayne's new music ring tone. I know it's all in the fine print, but there have got to be laws outlining what constitutes fine print transparent and deceptive. How can any child possibly pay attention to the small text at the bottom of their tv when they're being bombarded with explosions of colors and sounds elsewhere on the screen?

Does anyone know anyone who works at Zynga? What is your impression of them?

A friend has just begun the interview process with them and would like to find out about the culture and the direction of the company. Neither he nor I have any other reliable source of information.

Arrington seems dissapointed that he doesn't get to milk this for the next 3 months.

The good news (I guess) is that evil keeps on coming back. As Frind pointed out in his comment on the earlier stories, this has been going on for years, and Zynga are just one of the more recent more obvious purveyors of this brand of nastiness. For every one that gets called out, there will be ten more "entrepreneurs" that read the article and think, "Hey, that's a great idea!"

Unfortunately, sometimes companies get away with doing this (or some other equally nasty tactics) in the early days, and then convert to more legitimate models once they've got some cash in the bank, but before it really has a chance to bite them.

Can these guys actually make real money without these scams? I've not played their games, so this is an honest question.

A large portion of revenues for social games/worlds (Zynga, Playdom, Second Life, IMVU, etc) are gotten from users so passionate about the game they pay directly for credits - that is as clean as it gets and a solid revenue stream even if you cut out the bottom-feeder lead gen offers...

According to another techcrunch article about a third of zynga's revenues are from these types of promotions.

That being said - not all of them are of the scam variety so while Zynga may take a slight hit they should be fine.

Noting as well that this is a better long term position considering the social networks themselves would likely start policing these moves at some point.