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.

Branded virtual goods company AdNectar is expanding from its base on Facebook to Twitter and LiveJournal, in a test of how much users on those sites want to send items like Fisher-Price’s Elmo Tickle Hands “Ticklegrams.”

Virtual gifting has been a hit on Facebook, including the giving of branded virtual goods. Facebook’s own gift store is making around $70 million a year, we hear, and countless gifting apps continue to be popular. But it remains to be seen how well these sorts of gifts work on other sites. Virtual goods have not proven a big business on Twitter, to our knowledge at least; LiveJournal has its own gift store, so the AdNectar integration is pretty clear. The tightly-woven set of applications and friend connections on social networks seem to be what makes virtual goods especially meaningful to people.

On Twitter, AdNectar is partnering with a company called fun140, which already has a sizeable Twitter virtual gifts selection along with games, quizzes, and other entertainment. It just doesn’t have the branded goods that AdNectar has. The way fun140 works, a Twitter user sends a gift from fun140′s virtual goods store, the recipient gets it as a direct message (DM), and the sender also automatically posts a message about the action to their own feed. It’s not so unlike how the dynamic works on Facebook, except that Twitter users have found this action spammy. For more, see what  social media consultant Chris Brogan had to say about it earlier this summer. Note: I don’t currently see any of these gifts live, so the screenshot is from Facebook.

Perhaps being able to see the major brands AdNectar works with on Facebook will get people more interested? Malibu Rum, Nestle’s Toll House, Trident Gum, Overture Films (Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story), along with the Ticklegrams, have been running on the site for months.

In terms of cost, the branded campaigns run “between $50,000 and $150,000, depending on the number of social media sites involved, the level of exposure, the duration of the campaign, and the number of branded goods,” according to BrandWeek. What sort of results has AdNectar gotten on Facebook?

In a past campaign for Godiva where AdNectar integrated virtual goods into third-party gaming applications like Friends for Sale, users sent 1.1 million branded goods, resulting in 52 million total impressions, 77,000 clicks to Godiva’s fan page, and 12,000 fans. Purchase intent increased by between 20% and 60%, according to the company.

So, for AdNectar, this expansion is a quite reasonable experiment in trying to further the reach of its clients.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

Germany-based GratisPay has established itself as an advertising offers company for massive multiplayer online games, like those on Bigpoint‘s portal. Now, it’s moving into social gaming, with the help of funding from prolific investors the Samwer brothers and venture capital firm Holtzbrinck Ventures.

GratisPay has global ambitions to provide offers for earning virtual goods, as co-founder Arne Bleckwenn explained to me by phone from Germany today — and that’s despite the company’s efforts to provide offers locally in European countries. It has developed local sales forces for five European languages: Beyond German and English, it includes Italian, Spanish, and French. For example, it has a local sales team in Italy, working with local advertiser who do not even have web sites in English, figuring out how these companies can introduce offers to Italian speakers in online games. Given the rapid growth of the European Facebook market to nearly 100 million monthly active users.

Overall, the company claims it reaches more than “150 million registered gamers” in 50 countries, including 80 million registered users on Bigpoint.

The company is also aiming for the US and other markets. It has experienced US employees, and is using its infrastructure and sales relationships with existing advertisers to offer lower prices than competitors. As part of that effort, it is offering application developers of any size 100% of the revenue generated from the first two weeks they try out its service.

And for those unfamiliar, the Samwer brothers have invested in Facebook itself and possibly Zynga but definitely stealth German social gaming company Plinga. With the GratisPay investment, they now have money bet on all parts of the social gaming ecosystem.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

The 3rd annual Virtual Goods Summit is rapidly approaching on Friday, October 30, at the Westin Market Street in San Francisco. The 2009 edition of the event will bring together thought leaders in the space to talk about what’s changed, what’s working, and the key challenges facing the industry.

The Virtual Goods Summit is hosted by Charles Hudson, my co-author on the soon to be released Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009-2010 research report. Charles and I will be speaking on trends in the US virtual goods market that morning.

The conference will feature a mix of talks and panel discussions, and the lineup includes a bevy of thought leaders from top social game developers, monetization service providers, and social networks. The full roster is below. In addition, this year’s edition of the event will include a full-day “Virtual Goods Summit University” on October 29th.

To register, click the button below and use the code INSIDESG for a 15% discount to both VGS and VGSU. Look forward to seeing you there!

Conference Details

• When: Friday, October 30, 2009
• Time: 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM
• Where: Westin Market Street
• Address: 50 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
• Register: Here

• David Wallerstein, Tencent
• John Earner, Playfish
• Min Kim, Nexon
• Dai Watanabe, DeNa Global
• Andrew Trader (A.T.), Zynga
• Steve Meretzky, Playdom
• Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain
• Nils-Holger Henning, Bigpoint
• Benjamin Joffe, Plus8Star
• Jameson Hsu, Mochi Media
• Cary Rosenzweig, IMVU
• Brian Balfour, Viximo
• Adam Caplan, Super Rewards
• David Marcus, Zong
• Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Steven Goh, mig33
• Owen Mahoney, Outspark
• John Smedley, Sony Online Entertainment
• Kevin Xu, IGG
• Zhan Ye, GameVision
• Renata Dionello, Paypal
• Ron Hirson, BOKU
• Siqi Chen, Serious Business
• Phlip Yun, NHN USA
• Keith Rabois, Slide
• David Jesse, Gaia Online
• Shanna Tellerman, Wildpockets
• Vikas Gupta, Jambool
• Bill Wang, Perfect World
• Geoff Cook, MyYearbook
• Bill Grosso, Live Gamer
• Robin Chan, XPD Media
• Dave Etling, InComm
• Ludovic Bodin, CMUNE
• Anu Shukla, Offerpal Media
• Fernando Paiz, Turbine
• Melinda Byerley, Linden Lab
• Roger Wood, ORCA
• Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners
• Eugene Yoo, Globespan Capital
• Will O’Brien, TrialPay
• Shin Takamiya, Globis Capital Partners
• Jinen Kamdar, Ning
• Lex Bayer, Spare Change (PlaySpan)
• Justin Smith, Inside Social Games

FarmVille broke all sorts of records as the fastest-growing and largest application on Facebook. But now another Zynga production, Café World, is looking set to best it. The app has grown from 0 to 8.6 million users since it launched a week ago, according to AppData, based on a combination of cross-promotion from other Zynga games (including FarmVille) and advertising on Facebook.

This is especially good for Zynga, as we believe the company could try to go public as soon as next March. Café World has a baked-in revenue model in the form of virtual goods. It’s another big hit using the so-called “Zynga Playbook” for making apps grow, meaning the company can further justify its 2009 financials to public investors. We’ve heard the company is already on track to make $200 million this year.

However, the effect on the overall social gaming developer ecosystem is not so clearly good.

Café World is not a clone of Playfish‘s Restaurant City, but there are many similarities — like the fact that both are virtual restaurant games, where users create restaurants, cook and sell virtual food, etc…. Specific similarities include: The layout of the restaurants, the view of the street on the side, the design and animation of characters — especially walking and eating. See our review of the two games for more on that. Café World has done some features in a more interesting way, like restaurant expansion.

In context, Restaurant City is currently the eleventh largest application on Facebook, with 16.2 million monthly active users. It is one of the company’s crown jewels, the other big one being Pet Society, at number 6 with 19.5 million monthly active users. The company is the second largest developer on Facebook, with 56.9 million monthly active users. But Zynga is the largest with 140 million, if you add up all of its applications (note: this number is not de-duplicated).

To get a sense for what Café World means for Restaurant City, take a look at what happened to Slashkey‘s Farm Town before and after Zynga launched FarmVille in June. As FarmVille grew, Farm Town’s traffic leveled off, even though it is staying steady with nearly 19 million monthly active users. The same may be happening for Restaurant City, as its traffic has also leveled off in the last week. Although none of those stories have been fully told — Playfish’s Country Story, also a virtual farming game, is smaller but is still managing to grow. It has more than doubled in the last 90 days, from 3.15 million to 7.34 million monthly actives.

What Zynga is showing is that it is willing to copy, then innovate on high-quality games perfected by others, and use its market size, cash, and optimization techniques to do that. Its cross-promotion efforts include strategically placed buttons for Café World in other games, including hits like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille and more. In terms of money, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Zynga is spending $50 million on Facebook ads this year. Meanwhile, Zynga isn’t just coming out with quality new games. It keeps pumping out new versions of existing games, like its recent expansions of Mafia Wars.

For any company that develops a game that gets traction, Zynga has the ability to come in and do it better.

It is not clear what any other developer can do to stop this, besides find more effective ways to build and market their own apps. While Zynga is sometimes busted for things like spammy invites, many other developers have been or actively are guilty of the same. Perhaps a group of VCs or a private equity firm will step in with $100 million, roll up some of the smaller yet successful developer shops, and go to war? Perhaps more established gaming companies will make acquisitions and devote more resources to social gaming? Yesterday, casual game company PopCap raised $22.5 million in a large part to push its social gaming effort faster — this is after ten years of the company growing to 240 employees without ever taking a round. And it was not surprising to hear, earlier this week, that another large rival, Playdom, is looking to raise more money.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

While Zynga, like most other social game developers, has habitually been “inspired” by others’ successful games, the company itself is apparently now being cloned in Germany. Or at least the attempt is being made, and by none other than a company funded by the Samwer brothers.

The three brothers have made a career founding or investing in German companies closely modeled after American ones. For example, they invested in German Facebook clone StudiVZ, sold their shares, and in early 2008 bought into Facebook itself. Now, their investment firm, called Rocket Internet, has put money into a new company called Plinga, according to German gaming site GameBizz.

The company more than rhymes with Zynga, as it apparently is going to attempt to copy Zynga’s games. For now, though, it only has one live, a simple social card game called FunCards. “Like UNO, just better!” is its slogan. The app, launched late last month, has a little more than 6,000 users. In other words, a long way to go to match its namesake’s more than 129 million unique monthly users.

As any social gaming developer reading this must appreciate, there is a certain humor to a new company purposefully positioning itself as a copycat, when in fact almost every social gaming company on Facebook today has been perfecting the art for years.

Interestingly, the report also seems to say that the Samwer brothers have put money directly into Zynga, although we have not see this information published anywhere else — and we don’t speak German so we’re reading the GameBizz article using Google Translate. Here’s that mention:

To dig deeper into virtual goods, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

Virtual goods may be bringing millions of dollars for social and casual gaming companies, but there are still lots of bills to pay, from servers to employees to advertising. Some of those costs appear to be the cause behind Habbo maker Sulake‘s planned layoffs.

Last year, the company made 50.1 million Euros in revenue in 2008, with profits of only 1 million Euros, according to Arctic Startup. That would have been revenue of $70 million, going by the exchange rate at the end of last year, with profits of around $1.4 million. Those are not great margins. So, the Finnish company plans to lay off 40 employees out of its 300 total, the publication reports.

While we don’t know the exact reasons for the layoffs, one analysis from last March suggests that Sulake either had unoptimized technology or was overstaffed, or both.

Despite all of the optimism we and many others have about the virtual goods model, this is a sharp reminder that revenue and profit are two very different things. Still, some companies, like China-based Changyou.com, are seeing much healthier bottom lines — that company recently reported a 54 percent margin over the last 12 months.

To dig deeper into virtual goods, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

The dynamic of buying or earning virtual goods in games is looking like a potentially significant new way to make money for social causes. Zynga is experimenting with this. Last Friday, it introduced a new a virtual sweet potato that you can plant in its hit virtual farming game FarmVille. If you buy a license to plant the potatoes, Zynga will donate half the proceeds to two non-profits working in Haiti.

So far, users have bought 128,000 sweet potatoes. At a cost of 25 FV cash (the game’s virtual currency), and with 5 FV cash costing $1, revenue so far comes out to around $640,000 total. Zynga says $321,000 is being donated as a result.

The other half goes to Zynga, so if a lot of users end up buying this good with philanthropy in mind, then it could prompt the company — and other game developers — to introduce more charity revenue-share goods.

The sweet potatoes also offer special benefits to users. Besides the charity donation, “the Sweet Potato crop NEVER withers, harvests in 1 day and yields 3 XP and 125 coins and promises a special gift with purchase,” as the blog FarmVille Freak notes.

However, buying seems to have slowed down. On Sunday, Zynga investor Fred Wilson posted about the charity-goods model, and said that 100,000 sweet potatoes had been sold. Today, Zynga tells us the number is now 128,000. There are all sorts of reasons why this change could be the case, like FarmVille itself having accessibility problems this week (it does for me, right now). The caveat is that the license for these seeds only lasts a week, then it has to be renewed for another $5, so next Friday might see a surge of satisfied virtual sweet potato farmers.

The larger point here is that users seem to be willing to participate in something that benefits themselves, Zynga and a social cause. FarmVille itself is the largest application on Facebook, having grown from nothing in June to more than 55 million monthly active users as of today.

Zynga should also be commended for disclosing how much revenue it’s sharing with charities, as a number of other gaming applications on Facebook purport to be dedicated to social causes, yet actually keep almost all of the money for themselves.

On a related note, teen social network myYearbook has been letting users donate virtual currency to causes. That effort is run through the company’s Causes app, rather than a game, but it’s relevant because the site’s currency itself is a game-style dynamic.

Here’s more about the sweet potatoes in the game:

Salutations, y’all! Today, FarmVille is proud to release “Sweet Seeds for Haiti”. In this event, y’all will be able to purchase Sweet Potatoes that NEVER WITHER, yield XP and 125 COINS PER HARVEST! Even better than that is the fact that 50% of the proceeds will go to helpin’ children in Haiti. What could be sweeter than lending a helping hand to children in need? You’ll also get a SPECIAL GIFT with your purchase so hurry on over to FarmVille and check it out!

And here’s more about the recipient charities:

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the 7th poorest in the world. Zynga’s mission of connecting the world through games is enhanced by our opportunity to support the health and education of these children and their families. For additional information on the recipient organizations, please see www.FATEM.org and www.FONKOZE.org.

FATEM is a non-profit organization based in Mirebalais, Haiti, and originally organized to bring information technology to the people in the region, thus helping with the economic advancement of the area. More recently, however, FATEM recognized the need for a sustainable means by which to support the general education of Haitian children and to ensure that these children have the necessary meals that will permit their young bodies and brains to learn and grow.

FONKOZE, based in Port-au-Prince, is an alternative bank for the poor. It is Haiti’s largest micro-finance institution and is committed to the economic and social improvement of the people and communities of Haiti and to the reduction of poverty in the country.

Since the invention of the tamagotchi in the 1990s, a wide range of companies have introduced games where you take care of a virtual pet — with social games on Facebook, like (fluff)friends, recently inspiring strong followings. Ngmoco has one of their own planned for the iPhone and iPod Touch, that is visually stunning and promises a range of features new to the genre. Called Touch Pets: Dogs, it’s due out “soon,” so here’s a closer look at what the game promises, based on what we know.

The game is multi-faceted: Do a good job of taking care of your pet, and it can go on to do things like pursue “adventures” in the form of careers, such as “scientist.” Pet your dog — with your finger, using the device’s touch screen — and it will become happier, and earn you more “Puppy Points.” Spend these points on virtual outfits, grooming tools, or toys to entertain it with. Train your dog with toys, and you’ll be able to get them jobs, and if they do well, you’ll earn access to additional items.

You can choose from five different types of dogs. Each one has a career specialty. The labrador, for example, is a “rescue specialist.”

In terms of social features, there’s a global “dog feed” where you can see what other players are doing. You can also do “play dates,” where dogs can travel from device to device. As opposed to other types of virtual pets games, where your pets suffer when you’re not taking care of them, these dogs can develop new relationships and continue improving even when you’re offline.

And, according to a preview by Kotaku, there’s integration with Facebook Connect. You’ll be able to take care of your Facebook friend’s pets , and publish your activities from the game back to your Facebook profile page.

Here’s a couple videos from Ngmoco showing various components of the game. While we haven’t had a chance to play it ourselves, it looks like a strong follow-up to other hits, like Rolando, that the company has been making.

Here’s more about the basic petting and caring parts of the game:

Friendster has been losing ground to Facebook on its now-home turf of Southeast Asia, including key markets like the Philippines and Indonesia. But the company is looking to change things up, even as it continues hunting for a sale, as described in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article.

One of those changes will be a new focus on social gaming, according to chief executive Richard Kimber; another focus will be on local musicians. It’s not yet clear what the social gaming focus will mean, as the company currently offers a developer platform but nothing more. Perhaps the change will be along the lines of what Hi5 has done, introducing a customized gaming portal that includes its own currency, and partnerships with select game developers. Given the many companies in Asia that have built businesses in games, from China’s Tencent to Asia’s Cyworld to new Chinese-language Facebook developers, perhaps Friendster can tap into the interests of its local markets? That remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the company is not profitable, and looking to sell, according to the Chronicle article. It has found “a number of interested parties” in Asia and in the US, according to Kimber. It hopes to finalize a deal by the end of the year. ComScore’s August numbers who the site dropping from 32.6 million monthly unique visitors in August of 2008 to 12.7 million this past August. Facebook, as we’ve been covering, has been introducing its crowd-sourced translations across the region.

Also, for what it’s worth, Friendster keeps piling up patents. The latest is one described as the “Method for sharing relationship information stored in a social network database with third party databases,” as TechCrunch covered earlier this week. It’s not clear if these patents are enforceable, as they cover many generic social networking features. But still, perhaps they can help bolster Friendster’s sale price.