The social gaming company behind FarmVille is seeking the spotlight. Some analysts sense an IPO.

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga

If ever a company had a moment, this is Zynga’s.  The small, privately held company that makes games for Facebook and other social networks is getting publicity and attention companies many times its size would love to have.

The force behind the FarmVille sensation has appeared on the front page of the New York Times, and been featured in Time, a BusinessWeek cover story, The Economist, and this website's magazine. During a recent trip to New York, Zynga’s spunky CEO Mark Pincus was scheduling meetings with reporters until he reportedly lost his voice.

Then there are the billboards on Highway 101 in Silicon Valley. Both showcase animated characters from Zynga’s games and attempt to lure employees. Earlier versions showed a black silhouette of a bulldog against a red backdrop (Zynga is named after Pincus’s deceased American Bulldog, Zinga).

The promos – and the flood of (mostly) positive press – have gotten more than a few tongues wagging: Is Zynga priming the public for a stock offering? More

Before getting into gaming, Farmville's father was a player in the glam world of online tech support.

Before Zynga, there was SupportSoft.

Pickus (not Pincus) discusses his company's new model. Photo: Support.com

Prior to launching the hot social gaming outfit that spawned Farmville and Café World, Mark Pincus founded a trio of companies: Social networking company Tribe.net, downloading service FreeLoader, and SupportSoft, a company that began providing support software for enterprise companies in 2001.

Today, SupportSoft is called Support.com (SPRT) and its current CEO is named Josh Pickus. (The similarity to the name of the company's founder is eerie but purely coincidental.)

The company’s focus has also morphed; the company earlier this year sold its enterprise division to Consona Corporation — a daring move, considering that sales to corporations made up a big chunk of Support.com's revenue in recent years. More

Will your cellphone soon become a proxy for your credit card? Zong and others are betting on it.

If there’s one thing online merchants want, it’s to make it quicker and easier for you to buy what they’re selling. This is the case whether you’re buying a novel from Amazon or an iPod nano. But it’s especially true for micropayment impulse buys like a new handbag for your avatar or virtual fuel for your tractor in an online world or game.

One way purveyors of such virtual goods are streamlining the process for you to pony up is by partnering with payment services that allow you to pay using your mobile phone. Instead of taking the time to get your credit card and enter the number—during which you might change your mind about that virtual cupcake—you type in your mobile number instead.

Mobile payments have been hyped for years, and although they're embraced overseas, where fewer people have credit cards, they’ve been slow to catch on in the U.S. In the past, purchases were tallied on your mobile phone bill, and you paid your carrier.

Now, one startup in the nascent world of mobile payments has moved to lower the barrier for merchants to offer mobile payments. More

At least one company is making money off of social networking. The game developer behind 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars' has seen its web-based games take off – and deliver profits.

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga

On any given day 500,000 tractors are sold on the Internet. But don't start buying stock in John Deere or Caterpillar just yet. These are $20 "virtual" tractors that belong to the 50 million players of FarmVille, the largest and fastest-growing social game on the Internet.

Social games are free online applications accessed through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you've spent any time on either site you're probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, which rank among the top five games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga, one of the tech sector's most talked-about companies these days.

Behind the buzz: Annual revenue at the two-year-old firm is likely to surpass $100 million this year, prompting speculation that the company — backed by the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and PayPal cofounder-turned-investor Peter Thiel — will soon go public. The software company also has managed to do something that other hot online brands such as Twitter and Facebook have not: Zynga has found a way to make social networking profitable.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, who also started social-networking site Tribe.net and software company SupportSoft (SPRT), which eventually went public. (The name Zynga is a misspelled tribute to his deceased American bulldog, Zinga.) While many of his Web 3.0 peers rely on advertising and sponsorship for revenue, Pincus makes its money by getting gamers to buy virtual goods, like tractor fuel or land in the case of FarmVille, that enable players to build bigger farms at a faster rate.

By developing games on social networks, Zynga is able to capitalize on the viral nature of the platform. (Zynga estimates it has 70 million monthly unique visitors.) Gamers can invite friends to join them in the game, and they can send updates on their progress to their friends, stoking interest. More

Online sample-sale company tries to bring its model to luxury travel

Ready to jetset? This may be the site for you. Image: Jetsetter

At the Cotton House, one of only two hotels on the tiny Isle of Mustique, warm breezes drift in from the Caribbean, which is always in view. As you nibble on caviar and sip champagne at dusk, the only sounds are those of the waves gently breaking and a jazz singer crooning in the distance.

Daydreaming at work? Or maybe you just logged in to Jetsetter, a website launching later today that brings exclusive luxury travel within closer reach.

Jetsetter tells Fortune Brainstorm Tech exclusively that it aims to bring high-end travel online by adopting the model of its parent company, Gilt Groupe, a members-only shopping site featuring daily deals, or “flash-sales,” on limited quantities of designer goods. More

Social networking site elbows in on LinkedIn's job-finding franchise.

When it comes to finding a new job, they say it’s all about who you know. With the rise of online social networks that has never been truer.

Today, 42% of adults in the U.S. with Internet access maintain a profile on a social networking site, up from 20% in 2007, according to Forrester Research. And in an economy where almost one-tenth of the population is unemployed, more job-seekers are likely to look for opportunities online.

Meanwhile existing members of social networks may take the time to fill in more of their job history in their profiles.

Recruiters have been scouring professionally-oriented social network LinkedIn for qualified candidates for years now. More than 40% of Fortune 100 companies pay to use the site to find talent among its 46 million members.

But social networks are still evolving as places to hire and be hired, and Facebook, with its 250 million members, is gaining ground. More

Intuit, maker of finance software, turns its attention to health-care bills.

Quicken hopes to make health benefits intuitive. Image: Intuit

If you have health coverage, perhaps you've received that ominous-looking piece of mail from the insurance provider that declares: "This is not a bill," but looks a lot like one.

It’s called an "explanation of benefits." But the correspondence doesn’t seem to offer much of an explanation to anyone who lacks a medical degree or background as a company benefits manager.

Intuit (INTU), the company that simplified personal finance, hopes to help consumers untangle the complexity of health benefits and medical bills.  Earlier this year, Intuit introduced Quicken Health Expense Tracker, online software that translates medical jargon, shows the math behind the costs, and explains what to do next if there’s a question or problem. More

Alibaba.com expands staff, launches ad campaign in a bid to sell wares to American small businesses.

You might not be in the market for mass quantities of biodegradable flower pots or fly masks for horses, but chances are there’s someone out there who is. Both are for sale–along with hydraulic briquette presses and canned sweet corn in bulk–on Alibaba.com.

Never heard of Alibaba? More

Less than six months into his new role as head of News Corp. (NWSA), digital chief Jon Miller has no acquisitions planned. Instead, he said Thursday, he’s going to seed innovation from inside the company and spoke of “putting the house in order” first.

While he didn’t comment on News Corp.’s rumored plans to release a kindle-like digital device (News Corp. has denied that it will) he also talked at length about coming platform shifts and how industries will be experimenting with business models into the fall and figuring out how to adapt them. More

IAC welcomed a new member to the family today: a video venture that combines talent from the site CollegeHumor.com and an outfit called CityLights. IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller announced the launch at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Pasadena during an interview with Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer. More