This week in tech stock: Zynga surges, Facebook & Microsoft lag

Generally speaking, we love a good comeback story around here. I mean, who doesn’t? Watching an underdog make good and getting a kick out of it is just a very human thing.

That’s why Zynga’s uptick in the stock market this week almost puts a smile on our face.

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Today, we’re taking stock (ha, great pun there) of how various household-name tech companies performed on the public market. For this week, we’re looking at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Zynga.

Here are the actual price changes for the week:

And a closer look at some of the, um, value-priced stock on today’s menu:

And here are the percentage changes:

Now, what we must note at the outset is that Zynga is still selling for a pitiful $3.43 as of this writing. At its height a few months after the company’s IPO, Zynga was selling for a hair under $15:

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However, a string of layoffs and executive departures pummeled investors’ confidence in the company. This week’s slight bounce-back of around 70 cents per share is due to the arrival of a certain high-profile Microsoftie in Zynga’s hallowed halls.

At the very beginning of the week, we learned Xbox chief Don Mattrick would become Zynga’s new CEO, and Wall Street loved that news.

“We view Mr. Mattrick’s appointment positively, although it is not without challenges,” wrote Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “Zynga has seen its market leadership in social gaming wane, and finds itself neck-and-neck with King.com for social games dominance [King.com passed Zynga, according to AppData, to become No. 1 this week]. Similarly, Zynga’s plans to expand on mobile devices have taken seemingly forever; while the company has grown over the past year, it has as yet to generate a significant portion of its revenue from mobile.”

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LinkedIn, Apple, Google, and Yahoo all reported minor gains for the week. Microsoft and Facebook saw minor losses.