Dan Porter, OMGPOP Founder, Fired From Zynga: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Zynga has been one tech company that just never seemed to live up to its potential. After the company’s IPO in 2011, Zynga’s stock price has been tanking, and acting like an anchor for its partners — like Facebook — dragging down Facebook’s stock price as well. However, as the company looks to move into mobile games and apps, as evidenced by their acquisition of Draw Something, today marked a major change for Zynga, after they fired OMGPOP CEO and Draw Something creator Dan Porter earlier this morning.

1. Dan Porter fired from Zynga
It was just a year ago that Dan Porter sold his company, OMGPOP, to Zynga for $210 million. According to BetaBeat, Dan Porter has been fired from Zynga. Porter was also Zynga’s General Manager for the East Coast division as well.

OMGPOP Founder Dan Porter Departs Zynga; Will Be Replaced by VP of Mobile Sean Kelly… betabeat.com/2013/04/omgpop… techmeme.com/130402/p28#a13…

— Techmeme (@Techmeme) April 2, 2013

2. Publishing Giant Zynga Purchased Draw Something for $180 Million
Publishing giant Zynga purchased Dan Porter’s hit app, Draw Something, for $180 million. A former employee posted an article saying he had didn’t have any regrets turning down Zynga’s offer down, which let to Dan Porter firing back on Twitter.

“The one omgpop employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one of the whole team. Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance.”

“What’s so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is just one of many…”

Instead of saying his account was hacked, Porter actually apologized on Twitter. By this point the damage had been done.

3. Draw Something Lost 5 Million Users Once Zynga Purchased the App
Right after Zynga purchased Draw Something, a report showed up saying Draw Something lost close to 5 million daily active users. This brings the total down to 10 million from 15 million. The huge drop in daily active users set off alarms and was one of the worst tech acquisitions in recent memory.

4. Zynga’s Stocks Hurt Facebook’s Stocks in 2012
Last year Zynga’s stocks were at $10, and began to decline consistantly. In 2012, the company published a pretty weak outlook for the year, and stocks fell to about $1 a share. The drop was starting to hurt Facebook’s stock, since the two companies were so closely integrated, thanks to their exclusive contract.

5. Zynga Failed to Mobilize
One main reason Zynga was looked at poorly by investors was because it failed to take over the mobile space, like Facebook has been attempting to do. Most of Zynga’s revenue came from Facebook in 2011. However, Zynga accounted for only a tenth of Facebook’s revenue that year.