Inside Social Games

Here at Inside Social Games, we’re going to start doing weekly posts on the top 20 Facebook games with between 100,000 and 1 million users. We’ll be using our AppData analytics service to show which ones have gained the most new users in the past week. While we’re already covering the top games on the platform, taking a look at this smaller-sized segment helps show how small games and developers are growing up.

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		Jungle Jewels	900,423	+226,369	+33.6	GameDuell
2.		Quiztastic!	833,167	+151,151	+22.2	Playfish
3.		Birthday Countdown	653,265	+144,059	+28.3	Internet Design Zone
4.		How Sexy Is Your Name Calculator	401,513	+132,449	+49.2	Internet Design Zone
5.		Chain Rxn	929,287	+90,019	+10.7	Zwigglers
6.		Tetris Friends	726,255	+59,023	+8.9	Tetris Online, Inc
7.		My Family	709,265	+50,685	+7.7	FamilyLink.com
8.		Pirates of the World	875,634	+41,109	+4.9
9.		Fairyland	319,441	+40,899	+14.7	Play and Connect Ltd
10.		World Poker	836,823	+35,172	+4.4	6 waves
11.		Hatchlings™	752,069	+34,352	+4.8	Brad Dwyer
12.		JibJab	246,985	+29,408	+13.5	JibJab.com
13.		What’s Your Romantic Nickname?	122,030	+28,009	+29.8	Internet Design Zone
14.		Name Acronym	172,773	+26,488	+18.1	Internet Design Zone
15.		Xx..Me 2 u bears..xX	327,292	+25,202	+8.3	—
16.		World War II	301,321	+23,377	+8.4	CrowdStar
17.		Forever Friends	801,938	+21,765	+2.8	Martin Wee
18.		Hockey Pool	161,662	+20,930	+14.9	SportsButter
19.		Guess The Sketch Challenge	330,620	+19,314	+6.2	SocialHi.com
20.		Growing Gifts	598,571	+18,321	+3.2	Crafted Fun, Inc.

So at the top of today’s list are two puzzle-style games. Number one should be Animal Hunter, with 576,000 new users to reach 786,000 monthly active users. The game is not officially listed in any category, so it doesn’t appear on this list in AppData, but we noticed it during our more general look at up-and-coming apps over on Inside Facebook. The game is available in 9 languages, but most of its fans appear to be Chinese speakers. No developer is listed, although it appears to be cross-promoting apps from Hong Kong developer 6 Waves.

Officially at the top of the list is Jungle Jewels, made by GameDuell and patterned after PopCap’s classic Bejeweled game. It grew by 226,000 to reach 900,000. Given this growth, we expect the game to have moved up and off of this list by next week.

Playfish’s Quiztastic, a create-your-own quiz game that got off to a relatively slow start, continues to make its way up the charts. It grew by 151,000 users last week to reach 833,000 monthly actives, making it number three on today’s list if you count Animal Hunter.

As the games category of apps is loosely defined, there are also some simple, not-quite-games apps on the list. Ignoring those, other notable climbers include Tetris Friends, made by Tetris Online Inc, and virtual world Fairyland, from Play and Connect Ltd. The former is what the name suggests: a Tetris-style game. It grew by 59,000 users to reach 726,000 monthly actives. Fairyland grew by 41,000 to reach 319,000.

Further down the list, there are two more especially interesting games.

One is called Hatchlings, a Facebook-verified app that I can’t get to load, so here’s the official description: “Eggs have been hidden in peoples’ profiles, and around the site. Find eggs, hatch cute little critters, and help them collect eggs of their own. How many eggs can you find?” It grew by 34,000 to reach 752,000 monthly actives.

The other one is the app made by animated e-card company JibJab. It grew by 29,000 to reach 247,000.