3 charts for you today exploring:
*insert name of a distant relative* has invited you to play FarmVille.
If you were on Facebook a decade ago a message like that might look familiar as FarmVille — and many other games — were everywhere on Facebook. At its peak FarmVille, which was an extremely simple farming simulation game, had more than 84 million people playing it each month, which for context is roughly similar to the number of people that are estimated to play tennis (87 million) globally.
Built directly on top of the Facebook platform, Facebook games were a serious moneymaker for a number of companies in the early 2010s. The biggest of which was Zynga, which was responsible for FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars and many other titles which helped it grow its revenue from $18 million in revenue in 2008 to almost $1.3 billion... just 4 years later.
Easy come, easy go
As quickly as Zynga ascended to greatness, it descended to relative obscurity. Competition from other games, and the increasingly "pay to play" nature of the games themselves, saw players disappear — and never return. In 2 short years Zynga's revenue had halved, and although it took another 6 years to happen, eventually the original FarmVille was shut down.
Facebook games may have mostly gone extinct, but Zynga has lived on, and since 2016 has had something of a resurgence. Under new leadership the company has thrived in the mobile games market with interesting titles like Empires & Puzzles, Wonka's World of Candy, Game Of Thrones Slots Casino (?) and — of course — FarmVille 2.
This week the Zynga boss came out and said that he thinks Zynga can make an extra $1bn in revenue from making games playable for different platforms, like consoles. Platforms might change, but simple addictive games don't ever seem to die.
Yesterday a United Nations committee suggested that the Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated to such an extent that its status as a world heritage site could be downgraded. The Australian government disagreed with that assessment — strongly.
At more than 340,000 square kilometres, the Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system and has long been a marvel for millions of snorkelers, scuba divers and other tourists. Annually the reef is estimated to be worth almost $5bn to Australia's economy — and industries related to its exploration, development and maintenance employ thousands of people.
In the last 30 years, the reef has been shrinking — with some researchers estimating that up to half of the coral population has disappeared.
Bleaching is bad
Part of the reason coral is dying is because of mass bleaching events. When water gets too warm, corals can expel the algae that give them color — making them more significantly more susceptible to disease.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows how sea surface temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef have been gently rising — which in turn has made these mass bleaching events more common.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee will meet in China in July to discuss the World Heritage List.
Recent polls reported on by Axios revealed that anywhere from 25-40% of Americans were thinking about quitting their jobs — and in April 4 million of them seemingly acted on that urge. That's almost double the number from April of last year when just 2.1 million said "I quit".
When we charted this data last year, it was clear that there were probably millions of people who wanted to quit their jobs, but couldn't justify it in the peak-pandemic climate of uncertainty. Clearly those people are feeling little less anxious about things — and it's a good sign for the economy.
Quitting is good?
Lots of people quitting their jobs is a pretty solid endorsement of the economy. The quitters expect to be fine and go on to bigger and better things. It also (hopefully) means that people are pursuing jobs they really want, and that firms can get the people they really want.
The other factor contributing to quitting mania is the different approach companies are taking to remote work. With some completely embracing remote work, and others mostly returning to their old ways, it's likely we get a sustained period of upheaval in the job market as we all look for that perfect work-from-home / work-from-work balance.
1) Bitcoin briefly slipped below the $30k mark this week after China intensified its crackdown on the world's largest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has since recovered some of its losses to trade back to ~$34k.
2) A Californian man has been arrested after allegedly stealing $100,000 worth of... pistachio nuts. All but 2,000 pounds of the nuts have been returned to their rightful owner.
3) Investment banking giant Morgan Stanley has announced that any unvaccinated members of its 60,000+ workforce will be unable to enter its New York offices.
4) 96% of companies surveyed by Flatfile have said they've run into problems with data onboarding. If your business is one of the 96%, try Flatfile Portal.**
5) Sweetgreen wants to bring its SAAS (salad-as-a-service) offering to the public markets, filing for an IPO this week.
6) Last year 5.2 million people become millionaires according to a report from Credit Suisse.
**This is a sponsored snack.
