Inside Social Games

Facebook introduced a redesigned home page last week that emphasizes an algorithmically-defined feed of updates from your friends, called “Top Stories.” Before we get into our top 20 Facebook games list for this past week, we need to be clear about the significance of the redesign. It could affect any app developer that has grown primarily through sending “stories” about user actions in a game to the raw, real-time stream Facebook had rolled out in March.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Café World	23,814,664	+3,755,339	+15.77
2.	FarmVille	61,660,329	+1,337,570	+2.17
3.	Bejeweled Blitz	9,387,901	+672,871	+7.17
4.	Pet Society	20,714,196	+432,279	+2.09
5.	Restaurant City	17,454,448	+379,576	+2.17
6.	(Lil) Farm Life	5,767,916	+323,588	+5.61
7.	Pillow Fight	2,276,621	+277,162	+12.17
8.	Sorority Life	7,227,532	+241,824	+3.35
9.	Animal Paradise	3,947,124	+207,116	+5.25
10.	Brain Buddies	5,973,563	+203,424	+3.41
11.	Country Story	8,140,835	+198,876	+2.44
12.	Mobsters 2: Vendetta	3,499,318	+192,998	+5.52
13.	Texas HoldEm Poker	18,573,191	+190,208	+1.02
14.	Barn Buddy	6,863,938	+160,981	+2.35
15.	Forever Friends	1,129,551	+160,185	+14.18
16.	Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With?	414,224	+144,078	+34.78
17.	開心農場	4,304,908	+141,047	+3.28
18.	Sunshine Ranch	2,434,995	+139,408	+5.73
19.	JibJab	558,618	+132,643	+23.74
20.	Write In Pictures	541,397	+128,530	+23.74

While the real-time stream is still available on the home page, the default is Top Stories; it is not yet clear how much Facebook is promoting app feed stories within the Top Stories view. Also, the real-time stream has been revised to show you more types of items than it had before, such as who your friends recently became friends with. In other words, feed stories about games may be becoming less obvious to users, both within top stories and within the raw stream.

As the redesign went live on Friday morning, there have been two and a half days for the redesign to have an effect. From this early data, it does appear that at least some of the largest apps are growing slower than they had been. Before diving any deeper, though, we need to caution that not enough time has passed to allow for clear conclusions about the redesign’s long-term effect on gaming apps.

Also, we’ve recently rolled out an update to AppData that shows daily active users. While we’ve been tracking this number for months, we’ve only now made it public. So have yourselves a look at your favorite game on AppData to see how it may be affected.

Here’s a look at the top 20 Facebook games from last week, from October 18th through yesterday.

Slower growth?

Number one on our list, Zynga’s virtual restaurant simulation Café World still grew fast last week, gaining 3.76 million users to reach 23.8 million monthly actives. The previous week, it gained 9.96 million. Granted, the previous week saw such a huge gain partly for another reason: Facebook hadn’t reported new data on the app from October 9th to October 12th. On October 13th, the backlogged data from those days got reported, which is why you see a flat line then a big jump in AppData. So, overall, this past week was still a good one for Café World. The interesting part is its daily active user count starting on Friday. While DAUs were gradually increasing earlier in the week, they didn’t, starting on Friday — they’ve now leveled out at around 7.55 million.

Certainly, reporting issues affected Café World’s stats, if not other apps. Yet we’ve noticed something larger: The top 20 list gained 26.3 million total MAU last week, but only 9.42 million this week.

Number two is Zynga’s virtual farming simulation, FarmVille. While that app has seen slow growth among DAUs lately, that trend certainly continued last week. It grew MAUs by 1.38 million users to reach 61.7 million, but DAUs stayed around 22 million (which is still an amazing engagement rate, given the apps sheer size).

Bejeweled Blitz, from casual game-maker Popcap Games, had a solid week, coming in at number three in terms of monthly active users. Following on steady growth in past weeks, it gained 673,000 to reach 9.39 million. Its DAUs have been rising in waves, and maybe it just declined temporarily over the weekend from 3.15 million to 3.00 million. Still, given the Facebook redesign, interesting to note.

At numbers four and five are two games from Zynga rival Playfish: Pet Society and Restaurant City. The former game grew by 432,00 to reach 20.7 million MAUs. But it grew DAUs by more than 300,000 to reach 5.30 million from Saturday to Sunday. We see the same trend with Restaurant City, which grew MAUs by 380,000 17.5 million — its DAUs grew by more than 100,000 over the weekend to reach 5.22 million.

Going on down the rest of the list this past week, you can see dips and climbs among every app starting around the time of the redesign. It’s not yet clear how big of an impact the redesign will have, but there already seem to be some apps benefiting from it, and some apps not. Developers, email us or let us know if comments if you have additional thoughts to share.