Just watched a fascinating interview of Mark Pincus by Chalie Rose regarding Mark’s company Zynga. Zynga is the company which has created the Facebook sensations- Mafia Wars and Farmville. While I am not personally a player in either game, the fact remains that something very important and special is happening in this space online. Watch the video to learn more about the birth of a brand new industry- social gaming.

You may also remember that Russian venture capitalist, Yuri Milner from Digital Sky Technologies, just invested $180 million into Zynga last week. This investment is in addition to $300 million DST has already invested into Facebook.

My fearless prediction for 2010 is that DST, which also owns a huge chunck of Russia’s current #1 social network- Vkontakte.ru, will work with Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook.com to orchestrate some kind of acquisition or merger between Facebook and Vkontakte this year. Russia’s social media market, now the 4th largest in the world and the largest in Europe, is simply too big too leave to its own devices. I would guess that such a deal will happen in the 2nd half of 2010 after Facebook gains significant traction in the top markets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Once Facebook starts breathing down Vkontakte’s throat, then rather than die a slow death, Vkontakte will sell out to Facebook for $250 million in mostly stock and some cash ($50).

Such a move will position Facebook to grow with Russia’s quickly emerging online population. So, that’s my prediction. Let’s check back here at this time next year to see what happens.

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