Do Facebook users want to play an app that has a casual game portal as a foundation, with another layer of gaming built on top? The portal concept seems to have worked for MindJolt Games, which literally ported popular Flash titles from the web into its own app. We’ve seen other developers, like Big Fish, add more sophisticated gaming layers on top.

Strategic Design Network is taking its shot with GameToyz, a portal that includes a relatively simple gaming layer — competing to win real-world prizes.

The categories of games are fairly general, consisting of action, puzzle, dress-up, and even virtual space sorts of applications. Typically speaking, they are all very easy to learn and many, especially those distributed by Mochi Media, will actually be familiar to long time casual gamers.

Unfortunately, like any portal that has a wide variety of games within it, many are… less than quality. This ranges from poor game play, to cliché and overdone concepts, to horridly presented visuals. Thankfully, this doesn’t stretch across the board and there are just as many fun titles as there are otherwise. A particular favorite worth noting is Guardian Rock, from TorpedoLab, in which you guide a stone protector, who can only move in the direction you send him until something stops him, to destroy archeologists desecrating his resting place.

Within GameToyz, players are able to earn an in-game currency, simply named “Coins,” through various Coin Tournaments. This is actually the biggest highlight to be had for GameToyz, as by buying into tournaments, users are capable of taking home respectable amounts of coin, assuming they win (by getting the highest score), that they can then use on a variety of very high quality prizes.

Yes, prizes. Not virtual currency. Not virtual goods. Not membership benefits. Players can actually win significant rewards such as a $500 American Express gift card for 150,000 coins, a $10 Ultimate Game gift card for 3,000 coins, or even an Amazon Kindle or iPod Touch for 77,700 and 81,000 coins respectively. However, in order to redeem some of the latter, players must have “VIP Status” or “Super VIP Status” which requires users to Like, Bookmark, Subscribe for email notifications, and allow publishing, or pay about $10 respectively.

In addition to this particular catch, the other glaring issue is that there are very, very few games within the list of titles that allow players to actually earn coins. To that end, users are limited to playing games that they may not care about whatsoever. Essentially, this defeats the purpose of trying to have a wide variety of games that will appeal to multiple tastes and effectively drives a wedge between the meta-game and the Flash games. Since players may not be able to play their game(s) of choice for coins, they will either (a) only play what offers coins, just because it offers them, – which may led to boredom – or (b) completely ignore the meta concept entirely and play whatever they want to.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as users are still playing, and GameToyz does monetize with advertisements. Furthermore, you are capable of challenging friends, on any leaderboard enabled game, as another means to earn coins. Nevertheless, if those players can’t get their friends to play with them, then there isn’t much of a solution to the issue. Also, should the issue go unresolved the prospect of purchasing the currency begins to drop significantly.

Frankly, it’s hard to say that even the meta participants would purchase coins as the incentive to do so is very low. Yes, the prizes are good, but the point of having them redeemable is so one doesn’t have to pay real money for cool stuff. Moreover, the only other reason for spending is to buy extra “clicks” for some very basic, daily lottery games where players could win more coins.

As a brief aside, these lottery games themselves are a bit drab themselves. In one, all players do is click on one of six orbs, in the hopes that there is a reward under it. They get 10 tries. The other, is a map of the world in which they also get 10 clicks, in an attempt to uncover a “hidden treasure.” You could win up to 1000 coins as the maximum reward, but while the odds are one in six on the orbs, they don’t seem too much in the player’s favor on the latter; not with 10 clicks. They’re not particularly fun, but then again, we lost every time, but the bigger complaint is that there is no user feedback for losing – no “try again next time,” or anything. You either win or nothing happens (save for your click number going down).

Socially, GameToyz is about the same as most other meta-game applications. Most of the games have a leaderboard system built into them, so there is a level of competition, beyond tournaments, to be had while playing. Additionally, the app also comes with a respectable amount of achievements to earn and share, as well as a leaderboard for the meta concept itself, in the form of “Coin Winners.” Beyond this, it also merits mention that a few games also have cash tournaments, with cash prizes, but these feel even rarer than the Coin Tournaments.

Overall, GameToyz is an alright application as far as game portals go. It has a decent selection of quality, fun games as well as your typical collection of boring and mundane ones. The meta-game concept with the Coins is a great idea, and it ought to work fantastically well with the high quality rewards that can be redeemed, but there are just far too few games that can be played to earn said coins. Next to that, any other issues feel minor by comparison. The potential is there, but some cleaning up is required to flush it out.

This week’s list of fastest-gaining games on Facebook by monthly active users is unusual in that it contains a little over two weeks’ growth instead of one, due to a Facebook bug that froze stats reporting for a while. Overall, gains have remained normal, although obviously the below list gives the appearance of a booming week.

MindJolt Games leads off the list. While MAU reporting was down, we saw MindJolt’s DAU gaining significantly; we can now see that the DAU growth indeed tracked with a significant gain in MAU. But for now, the game portal is still slightly short of its numbers earlier this year.

Here’s the full AppData list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	MindJolt Games	16,014,674	+3,055,366	+23.58
2.	Nightclub City	2,555,064	+1,577,030	+161.24
3.	Family Feud	6,051,862	+1,235,533	+25.65
4.	Name Analyzer	1,668,781	+825,429	+97.87
5.	My Empire	797,601	+791,760	+13,555.21
6.	Bola	3,286,966	+714,444	+27.77
7.	Games	2,677,583	+564,207	+26.70
8.	Monster World	1,014,358	+558,300	+122.42
9.	Kingdoms of Camelot	3,709,340	+525,450	+16.50
10.	Ninja Saga	5,336,824	+508,751	+10.54
11.	Jungle Life	962,500	+502,097	+109.06
12.	Ranch Town	745,818	+448,830	+151.13
13.	Jewell Stars	723,370	+436,871	+152.49
14.	Ameba Pico	1,646,787	+420,514	+34.29
15.	Bike Mania 4 Micro Office	710,543	+419,944	+144.51
16.	Collect Roses	1,301,576	+405,710	+45.29
17.	Pool Master	1,104,534	+388,189	+54.19
18.	Baking Life	452,060	+343,473	+316.31
19.	Big City Life	1,749,168	+317,892	+22.21
20.	Age of Champions	404,453	+314,474	+349.50

Nightclub City grew significantly during the two week period, breaking out of the ranks of small games and into the big leagues with about 2.5 million MAU. That alone wouldn’t be enough to impress, but the nightclub management game appears to be continuing its robust growth.

Skipping down, My Empire is another newer, smaller game. That may not remain the case for long, though. The Electronic Arts city builder has gained about half a million MAU in the space of a few days, either due to EA’s advertising and cross-promotion power, or players taking notice.

Both Bola, a soccer game by Playdom, and Kingdoms of Camelot, from Watercooler, appear to be plateauing on their way to four million MAU. That’s not unusual, as most popular games stop growing before hitting four or five million users; games that pass that point are still relatively rare, with only 16 registering more than 10 million MAU.

Finally, keep an eye on both Monster World and Jungle Life, which are also of a similar size. By Wooga and Metrogames, respectively, these two titles in the now-traditional farming and pet raising categories are ready to pass a million MAU. Of the two, Monster World appears to have a bit more potential; our review of the game is here.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, May 24th, 2010

• Email Marketer Constant Contact Acquires NutshellMail
• Carl’s Jr.’s Facebook Page Combines a Game and Coupons for Food
• As Product Management and PR Intertwine, Zuckerberg Promises Simpler Privacy Controls
• Facebook’s Top Ten Languages, and Who is Using Them
• As Facebook Developers Move Beyond Notifications, AppGoGo Wants to Solve Their Email Problems

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

• “Facebook Questions” Tapping Into Friends’ Opinions, May be More Fun than Intellectual
• Appbistro Wants to Help Page Owners Find Useful Facebook Apps
• Entertainment Leads in This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Pages – Due to Ongoing Effects of Profile Transitions?
• Facebook to Give Users “An Easy Way to Turn Off All Third-Party Services”
• Facebook Will Take New Privacy Features to Congress on Thursday

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

• HTC Sense Is Coming Up On This Week’s List of Fast Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Nike Football Doubles Facebook Numbers With Early Preview Of Latest Soccer Ad On Its Fan Page
• More Details on “Facebook Questions” – Plenty of Notifications, No Privacy Controls
• Facebook’s Latest Languange Data, Country by Country
• Live-Blogging Facebook’s Privacy Changes Announcement
• Facebook Adds Easier Ways for Users to Remove Third Party Apps
• Facebook Applies for “0.” Logo Trademark

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

• Facebook Acquires “Private Conversations” Site ShareGrove
• Facebook Emails Advertisers to Reassure Them About the Latest Privacy Changes
• Facebook Updates Developer Data-Retention Policies, Tries to Stop User Abuse
• Zuckerberg on Latest Privacy Issues: No Big Traffic Changes, Internal Surprise, Future of Instant Personalization
• Facebook: Changes to Tab Dimensions on Pages Likely Coming in “Late July”

Friday, May 28th, 2010

• Foreign Languages Appear on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Tests “Related Photos,” Shows Users Excerpts from Other Albums
• Microsoft’s KIN Social Phone Makes Pitch Using Music and Facebook
• What Makes Games Succeed on Facebook? Insights from Playfish/EA at Inside Social Apps
• Facebook’s New Privacy Controls Give Users More Choice, and Direct Them to be More Open
• Facebook Roundup: Canada, Privacy, Yahoo, Ads, Lawsuits and the NBA

The History of Social Games – Though many see social gaming as a new field, entrepreneur Jon Radoff reminds everyone that, literally speaking, social games have been around for thousands of years. Check out his chart, below.

Six Flags Diving into Social Games Again – The theme park giant Six Flags has announced its upcoming new Six Flags Mascot Park — a social game. It will allow players to create various mascots that can virtually perform, with actions ranging from dancing to getting blown up, as they strive to become “the star of a virtual Six Flags theme park.” This is not the first social dance for Six Flags, however, as it had launched a simple collection of mini-games on Facebook back in November of 2008.

MySpace Redesign is Coming – Being second in social networks next to Facebook, MySpace evidently has a major redesign coming. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn noted that new products would be coming this summer, with a massive overhaul of the overall site design following sometime during the fall.

Blur Features Facebook Integration – Mainstream racing game, Blur, from the developer Bizarre Creations and publisher Activision is doing more than racing sexy cars. Players of the game can actually connect Facebook, in both single and multiplayer modes, and send game challenges to friends as well as post in-game photos, racing stats, unlockable items, and more to their Facebook feeds.

Mobile Flash Gaming Site Coming to Android – Earlier this week, Mochi Media, the Flash gaming portal that sold to Shanda Games earlier this year, announced the launch of a brand new Flash games site that will make use of Flash 10.1. Moreover, the site will actually be a mobile-oriented site, allowing users to play via the Android platform.

NoiseToys Helps Socialize Music – A new startup dubbed NoiseToys has launched a new iPhone app called HitMaker that takes a page out of the Fantasy Football playbook to socialize music. In a nutshell, players find music and “own” it, then attempt to boost how well it does by sharing it with your friends. If they like it, you get points.

Offerpal’s GamePoints.com Sees Early Successes – It’s been roughly three weeks since Offerpal Media launched GamePoints.com, the website that allows users to earn virtual currency for any number of games. In that time, the company has reported that the endeavor has garnered 500,000 users, whose favorite means of earning currency consists of watching videos, completing surveys, or earning shopping rewards.

MasterCard Opens Payment Platform to Developers – Long time online payments service PayPal is seeing some new competition this week as The New York Times reports MasterCard’s announcement of its plan to open its credit card payments platform to developers of both online and mobile applications.

Apple Gets Antitrust Inquiries, But Sees New Growth - According to The New York Times, Apple is getting antitrust inquiries regarding its supposed strategy for marketing its digital music. Supposedly, the company has used its dominance over the digital music market to dissuade music labels and internet music companies from giving online retailers, such as Amazon.com, any sort of exclusive access to music pending release.

Luckily, not all news for Apple is bad, as the continued success of the company’s iDevices (particularly the iPad) has pushed Apple’s market cap high enough to make it the most valuable technology company in the world, over Microsoft.

Zynga Invades 7-Eleven: Photo Evidence - Monday was the day that Zynga and 7-Eleven made their cross-promotion partnership, but Eric von Coelln took it upon himself to take a few photographs at just how much this entailed. From Slurpee machines, to sandwiches and fruits, the advertisements are everywhere.

Social gaming is shaping up to contribute $835 million to the $1.6 billion US virtual goods market this year. At the same time, social games have redefined social platforms like Facebook itself, boosting the site’s advertising revenues and helping it to blossom into a true, vibrant ecosystem.

This year, Inside Network held our first ever summit on these apps and games that are transforming how social platforms function and monetize. Inside Social Apps 2010 featured speakers from many of the leading thinkers in the social gaming industry, from developers and publishers, to monetization companies and investors.

Sebastien de Halleux, co-founder of Playfish and, now SVP of Business Development at EA Interactive, presented on what the social game developers of today can learn from gaming platforms of the past, and where he thinks the social gaming industry is headed.

A clip of the highlights from this presentation:

The presentation is available to the public here.

De Halleux also spoke with us in an exclusive interview backstage about where he thinks the future of social games is headed. Even if your core business is not currently involved in social games, pay attention. This rapidly growing industry segment is already presenting many brands with valuable opportunities for in-game marketing and advertising.

Sebastien de Halleux’s full interview covers:

• The role of creativity versus virality as levers affecting a game’s widespread adoption and success
• The consolidation of developers and publishers, and what the powerhouse organizations of the future will look like
• Where the next round of talent and growth will originate
• Can games themselves be drivers for overall traffic growth and user engagement on Facebook

To see the full interview, join Inside Facebook Gold at gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook

While television franchises have seemingly done little within the social space over the past year (besides the Family Feud hit) – at least in regards to full on games – the extraordinarily popular American Idol contest is moving into Facebook with its just released application, the American Idol Star Experience. Launching in tandem with the Season 9 finale of the popular television talent show, Canadian developers Ludia and FreemantleMedia Enterprises (FME) are looking to springboard off the show’s fan base by allowing them a means to become idols themselves.

No, don’t worry, Star Experience is more than just a mere avatar creation title. It’s actually two-fold with one half PC download and the other half Facebook showcase. Truthfully, the former is the real bread and butter as users download and enter what is dubbed the “Performance Creator.” From here, users are able to create their very own personalized, American Idol performance.

This is actually a pretty in-depth, game rendition of Windows Movie Maker. After players have chosen what their avatar is going to look like through a fairly decent selection of clothing and body types, they can begin to produce their show for the world. This consists of a few parts: Song, Staging, Poses, and Camera.

The song part is the most self-explanatory, as users select from a list of one minute clips from older, and more popular songs (i.e. works from Alicia Keys’ Fallin’ or Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You). Unfortunately, the list feels a bit short at the moment, and since American Idol revolves around pop genre music, it will not appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, it would be unlikely that more did not get added in the future. Once the song is chosen, it’s time to put on a show.

This is where the Move Maker similarity comes into play. Players are given a list of stages to choose from, and once selected (along with color), they are given a timeline. On the timeline, players are capable of placing pre-animated effects, poses, and camera angles at specific points in the song; which is generally every five or so seconds. Furthermore, each of the three categories has their own timeline, so you make up to three things occur at once.

The first of the three, effects (called “staging” in the game) is where your flair comes from and consists of confetti, rain, fireworks, and other forms of pyrotechnics. As for the posing, this is the animation of your avatar. After all, it would be a bit boring if he or she just stood there, no? With 52 different animations that can be classified and sorted by movements that are considered dreamy, fierce, seductive, tragic, or up beat, would-be Idols have an impressive amount of personality to grant their digital selves.

As for the camera work, this is everything from close-ups to long, wide shots, and everything in between. Frankly, this is the part where most Idol players are going to shine, because there is such a variety in angle and distance for each shot, that careless planning makes the performance a bit painful to watch.

Of course, there is one more aspect that could make performances a bit more painful…. Star Experience allows its players to… record their own singing, if they want, in a karaoke fashion. Let’s just say that some are good, and others, not so much, just like the show.

Once everything is completed it can then be uploaded to Facebook and displayed for the world to see. Within the app itself, anyone can jump on, view performances and rate them based singing, staging, and styling (the avatar itself). Moreover, users can favorite the best, and share what they like with their Facebook friends. Obviously, this sharing also extends to what they themselves create as well.

Frankly, Star Experience is a brilliant multi-fold idea. Already, it is basing its audience off of something that is popular and that, obviously, millions of Americans watch and love. In some cases, the level of customization feels a bit lacking (namely the songs), but overall there is plenty for most users to make something phenomenal. Moreover, what better incentive for would be singers to play than putting themselves in front of, potentially, 400+ million users?

American Idol Star Experience is a fantastic addition to Facebook and certainly a worthy download for Idol fans everywhere. If there was any one concern to be had, it is that the Facebook half of the game relies on user generated content. There is always potential for extremely bad or offensive content, especially when you consider that people can record themselves. Nevertheless, so long as the developers do a good job policing such actions then this is a game that ought to do well.

For those that follow mainstream gaming to any degree, it goes without saying that EA Sports reigns supreme when it comes to most sports titles. Having licenses with leagues like the NFL and FIFA, that’s hardly unexpected, but now the gaming giant is bringing one of those licenses to Facebook. The brand new app is EA Sports FIFA Superstars, and while it’s not the first sports title we’ve seen on the social network, it is one of the better ones.

Essentially, Superstars is a team management sort of game similar in respect to Hive7’s Kick Off. Players start out learning the ropes from a non-player character coach, with the goal being to reach the top rankings in the league. In order to reach that pinnacle, however, users must manage their roster, training, stadium and formations.

As this is an Electronic Arts title, the roster itself is worth mentioning as all of the players are actual players from around the world. Each one has a certain level of talent and a number of skills associated with a number, just like in the console versions of EA’s titles. This includes pace, stamina, control, and depending on whether or not they are a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, or striker.

As one might expect, the higher the number, they better they are at that role, and as users earn more money through playing matches or selling players, they can purchase packs of five players for in-game currency or the virtual currency Playfish Cash (eventually, you will be able to trade players). These packs, called Transfers, come in three varieties – bronze, silver, and gold – and contain better possible players the more expensive it is.

Once users have a nice selection of players to choose from, they can arrange their starting line-up as they see fit. By ensuring that players are placed in their proper positions, and as better ones replace the weaker, the overall team rating increases, and in turn, so does your chances at winning games.

The other aspect to improving your rating and winning matches is training. This is what is going to be most familiar to long-time social game players, as you can train your team in a quest/mission like fashion. This ranges from stretching to full practices, and will earn X amount of training points over Y amount of time. Obviously, the more training points to be earned, the more time (up to 24 hours) a training exercise will take.

However, this can be augmented through managing your stadium. Beyond hiring non-player characters such as a coach (which only lasts for a few days before you have to purchase him again), users can upgrade their stadium with training tools such as cones and dummies, or luxury items such as seating that will improve rewards from playing matches. Additionally, all of this, including your NPC team doing whatever training exercise you assigned them, is visible in a moderate virtual space, granting users a visual satisfaction and reward for what they are doing. The only downside, is there really isn’t a whole lot to buy. At the moment, there’s only six stadium items.

Once players have satisfied themselves with the management aspect of their team, they can move on to actual matches. These consist of four types of games including Friendly Matches, League Matches, Premier League, and 2010 FIFA World Cup. The first is typical friend challenges, while the last is not quite ready yet (which makes sense, because the real World Cup, happening in South Africa this year, doesn’t start for a couple more weeks).

Of the other two match types, most users will likely play the League Matches. This is actually the most social of the set-ups at the moment as players will play a limited number of matches a day against other Superstars users. The more they play and win, the higher ranked they become, moving from the junior leagues all the way up to championship and superstar leagues. Within each league, all users within that range are displayed and selecting them will show their relative player strength, training, team talent (how good each team member is on average), and formations.

From here, players will be presented with a rather epic Flash rendition of the soccer match, complete with play by play commentary. Users don’t control anything, but it does look pretty good and is interesting to watch the first time through. Of course, since most of the animations repeat over and over, most players will simply hit the skip button thereafter.

Upon winning, players will receive monetary rewards and move up in rankings. Should they lose or get a draw, less reward and experience will be earned.

As far as leveling itself goes, the game’s primary gating is for what type of matches you can play, unlocking the 24 hour training exercise, and allowing new player formations. Off the bat, users can only use a 4-4-2 formation, meaning four defenders, four midfielders, and two strikers. However, once they level up and move up in rankings, new formations and more interesting match-ups tend to occur, forcing players to try and edit their team prior to games depending on if the opponent’s formation is offensive or defensive.

This is especially important when users unlock the Premiere League. Overall, it’s about the same as the League Matches, but rather than other Superstars users, they are Barclays Premiere League teams. The goal is to beat all 20 of them, and, oh, they’re a lot better than you are.

Overall, FIFA Superstars is a fantastic soccer game for Facebook, and easily one of the better and more fluid feeling ones we’ve played. The only real complaint to be had is there is a relative lack of things that the user can buy, other than players or extra matches for virtual currency. Currently, there are only six training exercises, one staff member to hire, and six stadium items. For now, they work fine, but here’s hoping more gets added soon. Either way, stretch those hamstrings, run those suicides, and practice that control. We’ll see you on the field.

Our latest weekly list of emerging games on Facebook — those still under a million monthly active users — actually shows two weeks of growth today, due to a bug that left Facebook’s MAU reporting frozen for that period of time. And since this category, which encompasses all the newest apps, also tends to turn over fairly often, most of the names you can see below will be new.

The list is lead off, though, by a trio of games that have been around for a few weeks, and are headed for the million MAU mark: Jungle Life, Bike Mania 4 Micro Office and Monster World. Here’s the full AppData list of 20:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Jungle Life	890,481	+430,078	+93.41
2.	Bike Mania 4 Micro Office	707,972	+417,373	+143.63
3.	Monster World	869,527	+413,469	+90.66
4.	Jewell Stars	655,624	+369,125	+128.84
5.	Pool Master	995,181	+278,836	+38.92
6.	My Empire	276,339	+270,498	+4,631.02
7.	Age of Champions	341,575	+251,596	+279.62
8.	Baking Life	358,483	+249,896	+230.13
9.	phrases 4 fun	298,125	+240,810	+420.15
10.	瘋狂診 所	239,466	+233,057	+3,636.40
11.	My Casino	873,373	+214,801	+32.62
12.	Castle & Co	391,007	+213,939	+120.82
13.	Bubble Paradise	358,338	+202,903	+130.54
14.	Jumping Dog	727,579	+202,514	+38.57
15.	My Fish	409,658	+197,472	+93.07
16.	Belote	223,728	+194,743	+671.88
17.	Kungfu Online — Best Martial Arts MMORPG Ever!	440,176	+184,770	+72.34
18.	My Tribe	986,324	+177,286	+21.91
19.	The Agency: Covert Ops	202,854	+174,381	+612.44
20.	Keyboard Smash	439,520	+164,394	+59.75

We’ve reviewed both Jungle Life and Monster World, here and here. We have yet to take an in-depth look at Bike Mania, from casual developer Flashgames247.com, but it’s basically a combination of obstacle course and hand-eye coordination test; the aim is to get a tiny racer as far as possible without tipping him over.

That leaves us with the newer games. Jewell Stars, at number four, is a take on Bejeweled by Spanish developer Social Point; it’s followed by Pool Master, a billiards game. Coming in at a lowly number six — in light of the heft provided by its publisher, the mighty Electronic Arts — is My Empire, a city-building game based on the Greco-Roman polis that we found to be pretty creative. We should note, though, that My Empire appears to have really hit its stride only a couple days ago. Most likely, EA/Playfish was tweaking the game and making updates when it first launched, before pushing ads and cross-promotions to help it grow.

KlickNation is best known for Superhero City, but its new title Age of Champions threatens to become the bigger hit — not a bad problem to have. It’s one of the few heavily animated strategy titles we’ve seen to date, Sony’s Pox Nora being another. And as you can see from the screenshot below, it actually looks pretty good.

Take a look over the rest of the list — chances are we’ll see some, like The Agency: Covert Ops at number 19, rising toward the top of the list next week.

In another sign that the tech world is starting to take Android seriously, Facebook released its first official software development kit for the mobile platform today. Developers can use the SDK immediately with a couple of features, and more will likely be added in the coming months.

For companies looking to build mobile social games, the best option so far has been the iPhone operating system. But the growth of Android — and this new access — means the mobile OS is starting to look more promising.

One of those features is simply the ability to publish stories back to a user’s Facebook page — one of the bedrock functions of apps on the social network. The second is the Graph API, which offers a few more possibilities, including a more advanced interface with the feed and information from the user’s profile, like their friends, photos and fan pages.

Just two days ago, MySpace’s own SDKs for both Android and the iPhone went live. So in the space of a week, Android developers have gained easy access to both social networks.

Facebook’s own turnaround to creating an Android SDK is interesting. It hasn’t done much with Android, even though it has built its own iPhone app, and worked with manufacturers and developers around the world to integrate its mobile services. Toward the end of 2008, Facebook was reportedly snubbing the fledgling mobile OS. But today, a post on Facebook’s developer blog said the network is “really excited” to do its beta launch for Android.

In Facebook’s latest move to promote Credits, its virtual currency, the company has created a Page for the product. That isn’t especially interesting, as the company has individual Pages for many of its other products.

What’s more interesting is how the company is using the Page. One way is that it’s showing off third-party apps that use the virtual currency. Facebook has also promoted games that use Credits elsewhere, like in its Apps and Games Dashboard, but this in-house promotion is another way for apps (especially small ones) to get noticed.

And Facebook has also included a very broad definition of what Credits is, on the Page: “The fastest and easiest way to pay for digital goods and services.” That sounds less like a virtual currency for buying virtual goods in social games on Facebook, and more like iTunes.