The Return of Pincus, Apple Watch's 'Meh' Debut, LinkedIn's $1.5B Edu Buy; Thurs Top Stories

He's back. Mark Pincus, who left the corner office of Zynga two years ago after hiring "Internet treasure" Don Mattrick as CEO, has returned as chief executive. Mattrick was unsuccessful at turning the company around.

But in his absence Pincus "seemed to have largely disengaged from the business of running Zynga," write Nick Wingfield and Mike Isaac in The New York Times, even though he had remained on as chairman of the board and has a 60% voting share.

Shareholders shuddered, sending Zynga shares down 15% when trading commenced after the news.

It's a familiar start-up saga: The company famous for FarmVille, Zynga Poker and little else (there's your problem right there) has been unable to recapture the magic from early, breakout success even with a mobile-first strategy and even though it is the world's largest social game developer with more than 232 million monthly active users.

Mobile is still the make-or-break issue, and the early betting seems to be that Pincus isn't coming back with a new magic wand. Per Sarah E. Needleman at Fox Business:

Zynga's tale is a case study in what happens to companies that are heavily dependent on Facebook Inc. as a platform. Zynga was a dominant player in games on Facebook at a time when the social network was largely used on PCs. Once people began ditching their computers, Zynga struggled to adapt to a world of devices and apps, even though games today are more social than ever.

But Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and one of Silicon Valley's most plugged-in entrepreneurs and investors, has a different take about "my old friend" and the power of founder zeal:

Founders have the abilities to scan a complex and uncertain environment, and gather a team that can set out to reach a destination that may be barely visible in the distance. Founders make hard decisions quickly, even in the absence of data, and have the determination to trade short-term pain for long-term gain.

In Hoffman's view, Mattrick re-positioned Zynga into what now amounts to a mobile startup, where Pincus will thrive:

I think the key lies in the very nature of Don's accomplishments as CEO. By navigating the shift to the mobile platform, Don was able to open up a great set of opportunities for Zynga. But that same shift effectively returned the company back into a startup phase. As an eight-year-old startup, Zynga finds itself in a place where the ability to create popular videogames is necessary but not sufficient. It needs a world-class founders’ skills. And, in particular, Zynga may now need an Internet founder with the particular skills that Mark has.

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And, this is why mobile-first is the only way: Pew polled teenagers — 13-17 — and perhaps to nobody's surprise, mobile is where they live. As reported by David Pierson at The Los Angeles Times:

A survey of more than 1,000 teens found 92% of them go online daily and 24% of them go online “almost constantly.” The preferred method was smartphones. Ninety-one percent of teens went online at least occasionally using the handheld devices.

Any questions?

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The Apple Watch reviews are in and, in the words of Quartz, they are "uncharacteristically meh across the board."

There was a lot of (perhaps unintentionally) faint praise. Like Farhad Manjoo's closing remark: "The first Apple Watch may not be for you — but someday soon, it will change your world," which sounds more like the tag line for a concept car at the display foor of the Detroit Auto Show. Or Geoffrey Fowler at The Wall Street Journal, who writes that "The Smartwatch Finally Makes Sense … if you can tolerate its flaws."

As Don Frommer at Quartz put it: "The Apple Watch is the best smartwatch on the market, the reviewers agree. And it does some interesting things. But it’s not essential."

This tech press reaction is intriguing because in the Game of Apple Watching (no pun intended) nobody wants to be the person who dismissed the iPhone or thought Apple retail stores would fail. My own view is that smart watches are a breakthrough idea and that trend-setting Apple needs to close the deal.

Oh — if you get one, don't throw away the packaging after you do your epic unboxing ceremony. Buster Hein at Cult of Mac reports that it "doubles as a charging stand."

One More Thing: Back in 1975 they called those new-fangled digital watches "time computers." Apple is calling one of the world's most advanced computers a watch. Discuss.

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LinkedIn announced that it intends to acquire lynda.com, which describes itself as "a leading online learning company that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals." LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner writes that it's a natural fit "that benefits everyone."

LinkedIn has the members, the jobs, a unique understanding of the skills required to do those jobs, and a publishing platform that can be accessed by roughly 350 million people to share professionally relevant knowledge. lynda.com's service has the premium library of skills-based courses. Together, we can bring opportunities and access to knowledge that everyone deserves. And together, we can more easily build the Economic Graph by mapping together the people, jobs, skills, and knowledge that are core components of it.

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Don't expect a selfie, but President Obama and Cuba's Raul Castro will be in the same room later this week for the Summit of the Americas in Panama. Obama has eased the relationship, frozen in time like the cars they drive for a half century, which has some wondering if there might be a little personal one-on-one. After all, they "will face each other in official meetings for the first time, interacting at summit events and on the sidelines of the gathering," reports Julie Hirschfield Davis of The New York Times.

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts he faced in the Boston Marathon bombings. The jury deliberated only 11 hours. The verdict, though not a foregone conclusion, did not come as a surprise since Tsarnaev had admitted culpability even though he had pleaded not guilty. For the defense, the criminal trial was likely just a warm-up act to soften up the jury for the real litigation: The sentence phase, where Tsarnaev faces the death penalty.