Inside Social Games

It’s a new year, and that means new beginnings, right? We’ve sorted the numbers for the start of the year. Here’s where the top Facebook games are sitting in 2009.

During the last month, there was a lot of swapping amongst the Top 25 as four titles gained over a million (one over two million) and the long time leader was dethroned.

• That’s right, the long time leader of the Facebook gaming charts, Lil Green Patch, has finally dropped from the #1 spot with a loss of almost 200,000 players. Green Patch not only dropped from #1 but fell to #3 as Texas HoldEm and, surprisingly, Pass A Drink surpassed the titan for the first and second spots respectively. Teax HoldEm from Zynga gained a hefty number of users with 1,404,733 users, but Pass A Drink shocked all with a tremendous increase of 2,086,148.
• The Playfish suite remains on top with its popular games, keeping all of them securely within the Top 10.
• Out of left field swept in Snowball Fight for the holidays. The game from AppSynchInc moved up seven places from #17 to #10 with an impressive gain of 1,344,104 users last month.
• Meanwhile, classic apps such as Friends for Sale and Owned! continued to slip in the charts.

In general, December was a mixed month, as many apps saw declines over the holidays. We’ll see who rebounds and who continues to grow in January!