Zuckerberg: Zynga is a "structural disruption to the game industry"

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has credited games for the rapid and ongoing growth of the social network.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in California yesterday (as attended by VentureBeat), Facebook's co-founder discussed how, because the network doesn't create its own content, it needs third party firms to do so.

However, while he stated that "Zynga's market value is bigger than Electronic Arts" and that the FarmVille firm has "made a structural disruption to the industry", he disputed claims that Facebook's gaming success was entirely down to that one developer.

There "are four really good game companies that are built almost entirely on Facebook," he said of CrowdStar, PlayFish and Playdom.

"If you look at a lot of platforms, games are usually the first big vertical market. That's true for the iPhone. Even if you go back to the early PC, some of the first things that got people excited were games."

Zuckerberg maintained that game companies would favour Facebook, despite tightened virality rules and a growing mandate to use Facebook Credits, claiming that they knew the network could generate revenue for them.