FarmVille creator Zynga has released its earnings for Q4 2011, and while the company saw impressive growth in subscribers and revenue, it also reported a net loss due to investments in new games and some costly IPO-related expenditures. Revenue for the quarter jumped to $311.2 million, up 58.9 percent from the same quarter last year. The 2011 totals were even more impressive, with Zynga reporting a 90.8 percent increase in revenue from 2010 for a total of $1.14 billion. Earnings were a different matter, with the company posting a net loss of $1.22 per share for the quarter, and a loss of $1.40 per share for the year. While some of this was attributable to $510 million in expenses connected with the company's December IPO, even its non-GAAP earnings for the quarter came in at just five cents per share — a drop from Q4 2010's nine cents per share. Zynga attributed the shift largely to investments in developing new gaming titles.

That said, user trends for the company appear to be headed in the right direction. The number of Zynga's monthly active users in the fourth quarter hit 240 million, up 23 percent from the same time last year, and its number of "monthly unique payers" swelled to 2.9 million. The latter should be good news for Facebook, which received 12 percent of its 2011 revenue from Zynga. As for 2012, the gaming company is predicting an increase in bookings of between 16.8 to 25.4 percent, though it cautions much of that will be weighted towards the second half of the year.