It doesn’t surprise me at all that Facebook and Zynga have made amends.

A week ago, the respective giants of social networking and social gaming were at odds over of Facebook Credits, a form of online currency. Facebook wants 30 percent of all Facebook Credits revenue from developers, and Zynga, whose hit games Farmville and Mafia Wars rely mainly on virtual item purchases for revenue, was understandably miffed.

But because Farmville needs the daily traffic Zynga creates, and Zynga desperately needs Facebook’s existing social network, the companies worked out their differences. Facebook keeps its 30 percent cut, but sweetened the deal for Zynga with undisclosed perks.

What does surprise me is how long Facebook and Zynga agreed to stay together: Five years. Given the pace technology and the Internet have moved and continue to move, a half decade is, for lack of a better term, a ridiculously long time. Instead of breaking out the crystal ball, let’s put this in perspective by looking back.

Five years ago:

• Zynga didn’t exist.
• Facebook was still limited to college students.
• MySpace was the king of social networking as the 5th most-viewed website in the United States (now 12th to Facebook’s 2nd)
• News Corp. had not yet acquired MySpace (that happened in July 2005).
• World of Warcraft, the gold standard for online game addiction before Farmville, was not even a year old.
• Second Life was still blowing up. The virtual city’s population hadn’t yet topped 1 million, and Anshe Chung hadn’t yet earned $1 million selling virtual real estate. This trend story hadn’t been written.
• Monthly rentals were a dominant business model for mobile phone games. (If Farmville is playable on Android 2.2 phones, it won’t cost a penny.)
• To my knowledge, there was no concerted effort to kill Adobe Flash.

A lot can change in five years. Any bets on whether Facebook and Zynga will still be together in 2015?

 
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