Zynga launches PrivacyVille tool to gamify user privacy

Zynga is launching PrivacyVille today, a game-like tutorial that rewards players with game points for learning more about the social game company’s privacy practices.

The reward of zPoints in Zynga’s RewardVille feature will encourage users to learn something that they might otherwise find boring. It’s one more example of gamification, or the use of game-like features for non-gaming apps. Rather than hiding its privacy information in fine print, Zynga wants to draw attention to its privacy policies. Since Zynga plans to go public shortly, it is making sure that complaints about its privacy policy aren’t an issue that keeps it from growing.

In PrivacyVille, you start with a picture of a town and can click on various icons, much like in a Zynga game. A progress bar at the bottom shows you how far along you are in the tutorial. The town is modeled after CityVille, which has 85 million monthly active users on Facebook. Overall, Zynga has 283 million monthly active users, making it the largest game company on Facebook.

“At Zynga we take user privacy seriously,” the San Francisco company said in a statement. “As part of our commitment to user privacy we strive to make it easier for players to learn more about the types of information we collect, how it is used and what their choices are for that information.”

After you read through PrivacyVille, you can claim zPoints that can be used to redeem virtual items across Zynga titles. Zynga already has a more mundane Privacy Center with the same information. But this new way is more fun.

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