Inside Social Games

Zynga is three for three with this week’s AppData list of fastest growing Facebook games by new daily active users (DAU). Two weeks ago, it headed the list with FarmVille; last week it was Texas HoldEm Poker, and now it’s Café World.

Granted, the growth bar for Zynga games is not high, in terms of percentages. The company’s top games are already massive, so when they grow a few percentage points, they end up on top of our lists — as they have repeatedly for the past few weeks. But there’s extra significance to Zynga topping out not only on our monthly active user growth list; but on this DAU list as well.

Zynga has obviously found a new engine for growth, drawing in players more rapidly than it has for several months. The fact that its games keep showing up on these DAU lists means that the players aren’t just showing up — they’re staying, too.

Take note also of Mafia Wars, which has climbed to number five. And with that, we’ll save the rest of our breath for the parts of the list that aren’t owned by Zynga. Here it is:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Café World	9,562,640	+644,618	+6.74
2.	Country Life	2,566,073	+342,966	+13.37
3.	Happy Island	3,170,742	+342,335	+10.80
4.	MindJolt Games	3,137,642	+284,509	+9.07
5.	Mafia Wars	6,436,360	+179,084	+2.78
6.	開心水族箱	1,576,168	+163,073	+10.35
7.	FarmVille	29,716,810	+147,845	+0.50
8.	Farm Town	2,677,757	+143,223	+5.35
9.	Bejeweled Blitz	2,898,290	+138,633	+4.78
10.	Birthday Cards	2,084,783	+122,374	+5.87
11.	Ninja Saga	699,050	+122,342	+17.50
12.	GooBox – Jeux Gratuits	433,675	+116,836	+26.94
13.	開心寶貝	586,948	+102,233	+17.42
14.	開心農場	1,883,956	+101,992	+5.41
15.	Roulette Madness	155,965	+97,975	+62.82
16.	My City Life	559,119	+97,531	+17.44
17.	Poker Madness	115,848	+91,199	+78.72
18.	開心農場 2	294,849	+80,583	+27.33
19.	Treasure Madness	876,875	+70,999	+8.10
20.	Happy Pets	2,045,783	+68,728	+3.36

Country Life grew significantly over the past week, but long-term its user numbers look stable; the rise might not last. CrowdStar’s Happy Island, on the other hand, also made the list last week, albeit in a lower position, and appears to be growing, if slowly. Island games certainly seem to be here to stay, as evidenced by Playdom’s recent release of Tiki Resort, which we reviewed yesterday.

MindJolt Games deserves special mention for restarting its growth. For those that don’t recall, it’s the hold-all app for several hundred MindJolt games — a sort of sub-site within Facebook. It’s the company’s only app, which makes it all the more important that it’s growing well, adding almost a million DAU over the past month.

Many of the remaining games above didn’t appear last week, so they have yet to prove long-term growth. But do notice the somewhat ironic pairing of FarmVille and Farm Town at number seven and eight. FarmVille, as we mention above, is definitely on a growth streak.

Not so for Farm Town. The game has actually lost half a million DAU over the past month, and only appeared here because of what looks like a temporary uptick. In the end, perhaps there can be only one virtual farm.