Buying Virtual Goods That Also Do Good

What if you could use that online gaming habit not just to waste time, but also to do good? It is already possible, said Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga, the social gaming site.

Fifty million people play Zynga’s virtual games each day, according to Mr. Pincus, and many of them spend money buying virtual goods like poker chips or tractors. For Zynga game players, that time and money can also go toward a good cause, Mr. Pincus said Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Take FarmVille, a Zynga game in which players grow crops, tend to animals and visit their neighbors. FarmVille’s 56 million monthly users spend real money to buy virtual tractors, brown cows or carrot seeds.

They can also buy sweet potato seeds, with 50 percent of the proceeds going to two nonprofits in Haiti, Fatem and Fonkoze, which support health and education for children. In the last three weeks, FarmVille users have donated $487,500 to these nonprofits by buying virtual seeds.

Virtual goods have been taking off and, by some estimates, could be a $1 billion market this year. They are an intriguing new revenue stream for many Web companies. As virtual goods become more popular, the idea of “social virtual goods,” sold for a philanthropic cause, will also become more common, Mr. Pincus said. Earlier, Zynga raised donations for a San Francisco pet shelter when players of YoVille, another game, bought virtual bulldogs and tabby cats.

“Can games change the world? Our users want to feel like that’s true,” Mr. Pincus said. “They don’t want to feel like they’re wasting minutes a day — they want to feel like there’s some purpose. Just what we did in two weeks will feed 500 kids in Haiti for a year.”

According to Mr. Pincus, we are on the cusp of an app economy. It will be about applications that people use all over the Web, not just on portal sites like Facebook or Google, he said. The app economy will make money because people will pay for things directly.