Disqus
Zynga, the company that is known for its Facebook games, is testing out a way to bring its titles to the mobile phone. However, instead of going for the high-end smartphone users only, they are trying to reach the mass market with SMS.
This is not to say they’re ignoring the lucrative iPhone market — quite the contrary, the company offers few titles in the AppStore — the idea here is to reach a much wider audience of people with simple phones that can send and receive text messages.
For a start, they’re piloting the project with Mafia Wars, allowing users to fight opponents, perform jobs, visit the hospital, and top off their accounts via SMS. In order to play, users send special text command to MAFIA (62342). For instance – “A” stands for “assist a mafia member on a job,” “FF” for “fight your last opponent again,” and “PE” for “purchase energy refills.”
At the moment, Zynga is testing Mafia Wars with select users and will officially launch the service for a wider audience at later date. In order to sign-up to participate in the trial, visit apps.facebook.com/inthemafia and look for instructions under the “help” section.
[Via: MoCoNews]
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
