Zynga jumps from Facebook into the frying pan…

More social, more fun – Come out and play! | Zynga: “We just wrapped up Zynga Unleashed, a news event where we announced brand spankin’ new play – including a gaggle of new social games including our next “Ville”, and our very own new play service, code named, “Project Z.””

Zynga, by all accounts, is a hyper-successful company that has transcended its place as an app-gaming developer on Facebook into something potentially much larger. It’s riches were made on Facebook’s backbone of 800 million users and now it is leaping into the more open web where it will flourish like 1,000 dandelions.

Or will it?

Perhaps Zynga sees the writing on the wall and can tell already that social-networking based games built not on Facebook but on the obligation factor of social payments have a grim future in terms of how the current web-app market sphere is playing out?

Is the future with Second Life style social credits or with more distributed in-app (or bitcoin) type systems of monetizations and payments that allow for players to move ahead of obligation into something more inherit in capitalism… gesture based payments that tap into the notions of Daniel Pink’s Drive (autonomy, purpose, and mastery)?

I’d venture to put my bets on companies that take a different path than Zynga by not betting the farm(villa) on obligation or socialization but instead tap into what actually drives the human brain to achieve or look for more.

Marketers can and should glean a great deal from Zynga’s firecracker glow during the early parts of this decade and look ahead to future market trends that move us past 20th century concepts of what it means to buy the farm.