Players of FarmVille, an online game, raise virtual chickens on an imaginary farm. Yet they are happy to swap real money for vir

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问题    Players of FarmVille, an online game, raise virtual chickens on an imaginary farm. Yet they are happy to swap real money for virtual money to buy virtual farm tools. And investors are likely to pay more than chicken feed for shares in Zynga, the firm that makes FarmVille and other online games.
   Zynga is expected to file soon for an initial public offering (IPO). Analysts predict that the firm will be valued at between $ 15 billion and $ 20 billion. That is about as much as the world’s two biggest videogame makers (Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard) combined.
   More than 271m people play Zynga’s games at least once a month, and the firm said in March that it expects to make a profit this year of $ 630m on revenues of $ 1.8 billion. So its business is more real than those of some other online firms. But it is not something a sober investor would bet the farm on. Users may tire of virtual vegetables and online Mafia Wars (another popular Zynga’s game). Rivals are straining to grab Zynga’ s players. Electronic Arts, Playdom and Wooga have only about 30m monthly active users each, but they may catch up.
   What is more, Zynga depends on two other firms, Amazon and Facebook, like the cabbage crop depends on the rain. Although it operates data centers of its own, it outsources much of its computing to Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing arm of the online shopping giant. More importantly, most users play Zynga’s games on Facebook. In September the social network pushed Zynga into using its virtual currency, called "Facebook Credits", so Facebook gets 30% of what Zynga’s users spend.
   With Zynga gearing up for its IPO, the question now is which other tech start-up is next in line to go public. With Groupon, an online coupon service, also about to float, the supply of hot stocks is running low.
   But Silicon Valley venture capitalists are busy replenishing the pool. On June 24th it emerged that Foursquare, a location-based service, had raised $50m, a deal which values it at $ 600m. Foursquare lets users electronically "check in" at bars and restaurants so their friends can join them—and the people who owe them money can avoid them. A few days later investors pumped $ 100m into Square, a mobile-payments start-up, valuing it at $ 1 billion. Neither firm has ever turned a profit.
Amazon and Facebook mentioned in Paragraph 4 are used to conclude that______.

选项 A、the competitive situation stimulates Zynga
B、the dependent relationship hinders Zynga
C、they have full control over Zynga
D、they provide strong back-ups for Zynga

答案B

解析 此题为细节推断题。第四段首句What is more,Zynga depends on two other firms,Amazon and Facebook,like the cabbage crop depends on the rain,指出:而且,Zynga还需要依靠亚马逊和脸谱网这两家公司,就像甘蓝依靠雨水生长一样。段中间详细介绍了它们之间的合作关系,然后段尾In September the social network pushed Zynga into using its virtual currency,…,so Facebook gets 30% of what Zynga’s users spend提到9月份时脸谱网迫使Zynga使用其虚拟货币,这样脸谱网就可以从Zynga玩家的消费中收益30%。可以推断,这种依存关系一定程度上阻碍了Zynga的发展,B选项为正确答案。
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