Anyone can play Zynga’s FarmVille and other games, but very few get to analyze the data that runs off.

Ken Rudin, VP of analytics and platform technologies, is always on the lookout for new talent, but he’s picky. What does he look for in an applicant?

“Knowing what questions to ask,” he says. He might present an applicant with a problem his staff is puzzling through and asks what approaches to take. Say the company has invested in a some game, and even though it did well at first, growth has flattened out. What would the applicant ask? A good answer is, “It flattened out compared to what?” A not so good answer might involve degrees of standard deviation.

Contrary to the widespread assumption, most data analysts in business don’t need much knowledge of statistics. Far more important is knowledge of business. That’s the second qualification Ken looks for.

He wants business aptitude. “Ninety percent of what we do is making a business recommendation,” he says, to answer simple questions like whether to invest more or not?

What kind of analyst rises to the top at Zynga? It’s someone who can persuade someone else to change course. “In our company, if you have brilliant insight, and you did great research, and no one changes,” he says, “you get zero credit.”

People are busy. They have barely enough time to read all their email, much less spend precious half hour reading an analyst’s report telling them what to do. So Ken’s team routinely makes “sales calls.”

One recent insight took several such visits to the game team. In Zynga’s games, players send gifts to others. But if you send 10 gifts, for example, and only five of your recipients open it and only one sends you a gift, you might feel frustrated. The analytics team figured out how to help players judge who was more likely to respond.

Once an insight has been sold, it needs followup to stay sold. The game team might try it out for a week, decide it’s not working, and rip it out. To make it work, the analytics team may have to adjust the models, or whatever it takes.

“Analytics is not about insights,” he says, “Analytics is about impact. If no one changes behavior, there’s no impact.”

It was International Workers’ Day on Saturday and the official release day of Lyzasoft’s latest product: its foray into “free.” It’s a good way to say “power to the people.”

Some people associate that slogan with protests and even violence. But I think the best paths to power usually involve well-analyzed data, whether in public life or at work. Now the Little Guy has a potent new tool to deploy.

Lyzasoft founder Scott Davis calls Lyza on Lyza Commons “the YouTube of data.” This fully functional cloud-based version of Lyza is a strong tool for office-based, home-based, cubbyhole-based, dorm-based, or public library wifi-based users and groups. Import your data from whatever sources you have, refine it, share it with to whomever you like, and even charge toll over Paypal if you want to.

“Obviously,” Scott says, “what we’re doing is saying, ‘This thing can scale.’ But instead of going for the uber-enterprise as our leading play, we’re saying that what’s unique about this technology is it can make it to everybody within a small and medium business without having to have a big IT team around.”

Lyzasoft’s second, paid tier serves customers who need private clouds. That version starts at “small” for $150 a month, seating up to 10 users and providing “plenty” of storage. Go upward through “medium” and into “large,” and you pay $2500 a month for up to 200 users.

Wait, you say. You’ve heard this “YouTube of data” thing before. Yes, just three months ago another YouTube of data launched, Tableau Public. (I wrote about it here.) Tableau, Lyza, and YouTube itself all say “power to the people” by popularizing a medium with free, easy-to-use tools and a venue. Each one’s growing crowd of Little Guys and their audiences turns into a movement that the those in executive suites can’t help but notice. At some point, YouTube and those who follow its model hope that “free” leads enough customers to “ka-ching” to yield a profit.

YouTube seems to be well on the way. Its ready-to-roll movie theater had fired the imaginations in a waiting mob. These filmmakers-to-be had been trained over years of TV and movies to understand film and crave a chance to do their own.

Is there a waiting mob of would-be data analysts? One pioneer of free analytics is skeptical. LucidEra founder Ken Rudin, now vice president of analytics at Zynga, says you need more than free tools, no matter how easy the tools are to use. He says, “Tools are only as valuable as the questions you ask.” One of his biggest hurdles was getting customers to appreciate the possibilities of analytics.

But the YouTube idea is more than tools. It’s a game and a self-reinforcing mob. The tiny films YouTube users make don’t just play as if on a jukebox, they’re scored, they’re answered, and commented on. It’s like the difference between voting in a little booth and going out on a street march. It reinforces and stimulates. Unlike most business environments, it asks people to play, which is how Lyza Commons and Tableau Public users will break out into creative and incisive data analysis.

I also hope there’s a new supply of analysts. Ken Rudin and others are hungry for them. (In fact, if you’re a data analyst and you want to work with cutting-edge technology and data in one of the world’s largest databases, email Ken today at krudin@zynga.com.)

Power to the data analysts!

Everybody knows what “retention” means until they have to design a metric. Ken Rudin, once of LucidEra and now general manager of analytics at the games site Zynga, thought that he and his team could “put something together” quickly — but it actually took “four solid weeks of discussion and debate.”

About 50 million people play Zynga games every day. It’s the leading online social gaming platform, according to Ken, and it’s grown from zero in 2007 to revenues of “a few” hundred million dollars annual revenue. Every day, the company captures 20 to 30 billion records of data, and Ken and his team use that data to improve revenue, viral marketing — and customer retention.

Zynga players play free. The revenue comes in a few dollars at a time for “virtual goods.” In the popular game FarmVille, for example, a player might get tired of the old-fashioned plow. The tractor upgrade costs $2.

“There are tons of different ways you can think about retention,” he laughs, “and which one should we use?”

How do you know when a customer has left? “Unless we don’t get a note saying, ‘Hi, we’re no longer playing,’ how do we know?”

Of course, no player’s going to make it that easy, so how long should Zynga wait before considering the player gone? A week? A man could have dropped his virtual pitchfork for a real vacation — or he could have plowed the last row.

Ken dealt with analytics all the time at LucidEra, but games were new to him. He’s learned a few things.

“It turns out, as you might imagine, that it depends on the game,” he says. The average simulation-game player tends to visit frequently, for example. Poker players, though, are much more likely to come back after, say, a three-month gap.

The retention curve also varies by the length of each player’s tenure. A new player who stays away 30 days is much less likely to return than a player who’s been at Zynga for years. Ken now puts users in three basic tenure buckets: “new,” “mature,” and “elder.”

Whatever question you try to answer, it has to be actionable. “There are metrics, and there are metrics that matter,” he says. If volume plunges, were the missing players mostly new ones? If so, it could indicate frustration; perhaps the games need better tutorials or less functionality at the beginning. Or were most of the missing the long-term customers? If so, perhaps the games haven’t offered enough challenge.

Ken expects growth when the economy improves. “When we look at what happens over holidays, such as July Fourth and Thanksgiving, usage really drops. Then it picks up as people go back to work,” he says. “[The games] are part of their routine. On vacation, players break their routines. They sleep late and spend more time with family. They don’t play the game.”

“It’s fascinating,” says Ken. “In analytics, so much of the problem is figuring out what the question really is.”

I think he means that it’s a great game.