• by John Capone , May 18, 2010

The announcement by Zynga and Facebook Tuesday morning that the companies are entering a five-year strategic "relationship" (as they put it) makes perfect sense. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly, Starsky and Hutch, Lindsey Lohan and rehab, Mark Zuckerberg and privacy violations.

No matter what daring new ways Facebook finds to torment people's personal privacy there is one breed of user that will likely never desert the social network: the hardcore casual gamer. Now that term might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it isn't. These are the hollow-eyed people you see at that public computers in your gym at 5:30 a.m. planting seeds and feeding cows (at real farmer's hours!). And they number in the millions. And they are the linchpin for Facebook Credits (which Zynga is currently testing and is no doubt a part of the deal, though terms were not disclosed, and the nature of the relationship was not expounded upon).