Words With Friends on Tango
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Hoping to ignite a mobile messaging wildfire, Tango snares Zynga's Words with Friends

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Social game maker Zynga is announcing today that it is launching its popular Words with Friends word game on free mobile messaging service Tango.

That may get some fans excited, but it carries some strategic significance. Tango recently raised a whopping $280 million from China’s Alibaba and other investors in the hope that it can compete against Facebook, which acquired Tango’s rival WhatsApp for $16 billion. These are valuable as the next-generation messaging networks that are replacing text messages.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.