Inside Social Games

FarmVille simply cannot be stopped. That’s the conclusion we draw in this week’s AppData list of the top 20 fastest-growing games on Facebook by growth in monthly average users, in which FarmVille takes the top spot with 1,794,772 new players.

We speculated about FarmVille’s (repeatedly) rising star last week, when the game muscled its way into the number two spot. You see, FarmVille is so large that it can very easily appear on our top 20 lists by accident. But the game has appeared week after week of late, and slowly crept up the rankings. Last week we thought it might have started growing again; this week we’re sure.

Read our post from last Monday for more speculation, but the basic idea is that FarmVille has become a cultural juggernaut that’s drawing users to Facebook — rather than vice versa. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Zynga has a stable of hits that allow for some serious cross-advertising — also see Texas HoldEm Poker, Mafia Wars and Café World below:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	FarmVille	81,125,786	+1,794,772	+2.21
2.	SuperPoke! Pets	2,369,851	+922,187	+38.91
3.	My City Life	2,544,065	+910,267	+35.78
4.	SPP Ranch!	1,330,603	+729,983	+54.86
5.	Zoo World	20,158,073	+658,863	+3.27
6.	MindJolt Games	17,800,661	+651,107	+3.66
7.	Gangster City	2,151,345	+505,453	+23.49
8.	Texas HoldEm Poker	26,264,995	+431,374	+1.64
9.	Send Glitter!	688,223	+382,124	+55.52
10.	Ninja Saga	3,010,808	+380,118	+12.63
11.	Top Fish	982,586	+376,059	+38.27
12.	Restaurant City	14,726,955	+340,361	+2.31
13.	My Town	2,760,436	+308,735	+11.18
14.	PetVille	18,980,338	+297,809	+1.57
15.	Bejeweled Blitz	9,998,905	+291,483	+2.92
16.	開心農場 2	935,441	+254,698	+27.23
17.	UNO™	3,388,939	+245,120	+7.23
18.	Mafia Wars	25,303,930	+221,888	+0.88
19.	Capitales del mundo!	220,731	+220,690	+99.98
20.	Café World	30,592,937	+219,383	+0.72

Slide has been appearing on yet another of our lists, Friday’s top emerging games, with several of its titles. Now they’ve broken out to some serious growth: SuperPoke! Pets, SPP Ranch! and Top Fish are all by Slide, and have collectively claimed over two million new players in the past week.

Not listed here, Slide FunSpace also got a big boost this week to end up at number one on our Inside Facebook list. You can see the effect of all this growth on the company’s overall MAU below.

At number three, we’ve got My City Life, a city builder similar to My Town, at number thirteen. We wrote about both last week and particularly pointed out My Town, but now it seems that its rival is pulling ahead in growth.

Zoo World, the RockYou! game that was dominating every week along with its partner app Birthday Cards, has dropped down in the rankings with slowing growth. You can’t see it above, but Birthday Cards is now number 23 with a marginal gain of 0.37 percent.

The last game to take a close look at here is Gangster City. This Playfish game (now Electronic Arts) was released as a prettier competitor to Mafia Wars. Its growth has been steady, but not mind-blowing — if this game is going to have a breakout moment, it’s yet to come.