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

Monday, January 17th, 2011

• Badoo Makes Dating Sexy Again on This Week’s AppData List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• The Rewards and Risks of Facebook Developer Access to User Phone Numbers and Addresses
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Redbox, Westfield Valley Fair, Equinox and MET-Rx
• Experian Invests in Facebook Advertising by Acquiring Ads API Tool Provider Techlightenment
• Facebook Pushes Users to List Their Current City, Which Helps Advertisers

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

• Facebook Temporarily Disables Phone, Address Sharing and Aims to Increase Clarity
• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Zynga, Music, Football, Call of Duty, Movies and TV
• Last Chance to Register for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, January 25th
• Facebook Ads and the Rising Cost of User Acquisition
• Yahoo! Concedes Identity Race by Allowing Login with Facebook and Google OpenIDs

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

• Photos and Horoscopes on This Week’s List of Fastest-Gaining Facebook Apps by DAU
• Facebook Video Chat App VChatter Scores Funding, Although Its Market Is Uncertain
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: MdotM, Speeddate, & More
• Facebook Overhauls Its Apps for Feature Phones in Cooperation With Snaptu
• Washington Post Launches Facebook Marketing Agency SocialCode

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

• Facebook Career Posts: Partner Engineers, Credits, Ads, Search and Global Growth
• Sold Out! See You at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, January 25th
• Facebook Quietly Updates Insights to Show Real-Time Data on Page Posts, Bugs Appear
• How Brands Can Advertise Within Social Games
• Login to Flickr with Your Facebook Account Thanks to Yahoo! Accepting OpenIDs
• Top Posts Filter Surfaces the Best User Content on Facebook Page Walls

Friday, January 21st, 2011

• Katy Perry Sends Facebook Live to the Top of This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Adds Six More Ad Providers to Platform Whitelist
• Facebook Turns Down Additional $500 Million and Caps Goldman, DST Round at $1.5 Billion
• Facebook Temporarily Disables Suggest to Friend Option on Pages to Fix Bug
• Facebook Roundup: Goldman Sachs, Security, HTML5, MySpace, NPR, Cuba and Teens

Playfish Releases New Numbers, Comparisons — Social games developer Playfish has released a series of amusing numbers on its website this week. Here are just a few: 55 million people play their games each month; a number greater than the population of England. Over 90 million virtual goods are transacted daily – nine times more than what is sold on eBay (average) on a day-to-day basis. 1.7 billion apples have been fed to virtual pets in Pet Society since 2008, which is enough to feed everyone in both China and the United States. 10.9 million people have build a Roman city in My Empire. The number is over 10 times greater than the population of Rome during the height of its power.

Zynga Files More Trademark Suits — Zynga has sent cease and desist letters to the company behind “Blingville” for trademark infringement, claiming that no one can attach “ville” to a social game. Blingville LLC., however, has filed a complaint against Zynga, asking the courts to declare that no such infringement exists.

Scoreloop Reaches New Milestones — The cross-platform, social-mobile gaming network, Scoreloop, is reporting new numbers this week. After its holiday successes, the company is now reporting that the platform is seeing over 1 million new players each week. Additionally, Scoreloop has reported approximately 100 million game sessions and over 350 million high score uploads over the course of 2010.

gWallet Partners with Old Navy for Developer Contest — Old Navy and gWallet have partnered up to bring developers a $15,000 contest, says EngageDigital. Developers will be challenged to create a mock-up that integrates the Old Navy brand into any game, social network, or virtual world with the most original three also being selected to have exclusive opportunities to distribute Old Navy offers to their users. Registration ends on January 31st and the contest begins in early February.

[image via gWallet.com]

Goldman Sachs Group Limits Facebook Offerings — According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. clients seeking to invest in a private offering of shares in Facebook might be out of luck. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is reported to have cut off U.S. investors stating that the media hype regarding the deal was in danger of violating U.S. security laws. Nevertheless, over $7 billion in orders are noted to have come in from foreign investors.

Kongregate Launches, Then Loses its New Android Arcade App — Casual and social Flash games portal Kongregate launched its new Kongregate Arcade application for Android this week. A portal to the company’s collection of over 300 games, the app was apparently removed by Google only hours after its launch saying that “it was illicitly installing applications.”

Plants Vs. Zombies Coming to Android — Android owners may be a bit happier this week, as social and casual developer PopCap has told Kotaku that its popular Plants Vs. Zombies title will be coming to the device some time in Q2 of this year.

Jane McGonigal Launches Social Chocolate — Game designer Jane McGonigal has announced the launching of a new company called Social Chocolate this week, says All Things Digital. The games are said to involve the gamification and socializing of real world scenarios. The first title is said to be “SuperBetter” in which will close family members and friends will participate in order to help those who are injured or suffering from a chronic condition.

RockYou Signs Deal with Loot Drop — According to VentureBeat, RockYou has signed a deal with Loot Drop this week, a social company founded by id Software founders, John Romero and Tom Hall. Under the deal, Loot Drop will develop a RockYou funded and published title slated for release this summer.

Zynga has just announced the acquisition of independent game developer Area/Code, a company best known to our readers for its work with Ubisoft, developing the Facebook game CSI: Crime City. The New York-based outfit will become a new studio, Zynga New York.

Zynga has been busy buying companies, well, since its founding — but it’s made nine purchases in the last eight months or so. The reasons have varied: XPD gained it a China-based studio, Dextrose AG in Germany brought in experienced HTML5 developers, Flock’s team will help it expand browser-related features, etc.

Six year old Area/Code, however, has a strikingly wide range of experiences, including the somewhat unique one of building a successful media-branded social game for a leading traditional game developer. CSI wasn’t the first branded game, either — it made Parking Wars for A&E back in 2008, and that game made one of our first AppData leaderboards.

The CSI game did a good job moving up our leaderboards since launching this past fall, and today it has 2.25 million monthly active users and 402,000 daily active users according to AppData. Also, the social murder mystery impressed us enough that we named it one of the top ten social games of the past six months.

And, Area/Code is also a successful mobile developer, with quality games like Drop7 under its belt.

So Zynga is getting a competent team on its hands, that it can deploy on current or new social and/or mobile titles. Perhaps the newly-acquired company will go to work on a branded game (something that Zynga has dabbled in far less than many other leading developers). Or perhaps the team will go work on an intriguing new project in the works, that may just have some elements that are similar to Crime City — the new “Mafia Nation” beta we published some clues about yesterday.

The number of new sim, farm and city games is once again low on our weekly AppData list of emerging Facebook games, defined as those still under a million monthly active users and growing fast. Several of the top spots are once again held by Chinese-language games, as well.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	購物天堂	483,697	+311,378	+181%
2.	The Pokerist club — Texas Poker	355,220	+204,706	+136%
3.	Miscrits: World of Adventure	835,830	+179,122	+27%
4.	樂業超市	312,793	+172,425	+123%
5.	Bingo Island	807,621	+166,183	+26%
6.	Paradise Life	918,154	+142,777	+18%
7.	Tavla	650,090	+125,970	+24%
8.	Gambino Poker	537,681	+123,584	+30%
9.	Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★	832,044	+103,016	+14%
10.	MilMo	523,642	+88,076	+20%
11.	Pool Master 2	977,894	+88,064	+10%
12.	SNSplus	259,239	+73,119	+39%
13.	Football Life	101,876	+70,036	+220%
14.	龍之刃	264,784	+68,782	+35%
15.	CBSSports.com Franchise Basketball	230,983	+68,141	+42%
16.	UNO® Boost	762,149	+64,467	+9%
17.	Jersey Shore	930,947	+63,100	+7%
18.	Gourmet Ranch	614,684	+60,323	+11%
19.	Glory of Rome	297,088	+58,655	+25%
20.	Fashion City	370,412	+57,155	+18%

購物天堂 has players construct an outdoor mall, while the other Chinese-language game at the top, 樂業超市, is another shop-creation game. These two, along with Paradise Life, were the only sim-style games to grow significantly (a handful also appear near the bottom of the list).

Miscrits: World of Adventure continues to grow with its monster-collection theme, which developer Broken Bulb Studios combined with an explorative RPG mode. In some ways the game is pretty typical, drawing on ideas already well-explored by Pokemon, but it definitely has its own flavor, as we covered in our review.

A competitor that launched just before of Miscrits, Gaia’s Monster Galaxy, has a significant lead with 5.5 million MAU. However, Miscrits is better designed from the standpoint of virality and monetization, so it should fare well even past a million MAU.

It was a good week for poker. The Pokerist club — Texas Poker, Gambino Poker and Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★ all rank in the top ten. While none of the apps is visually or technically stunning, they seem to be growing by tapping international audiences in Asia and Europe.

As for the rest, Bingo Island, Tavla, Pool Master 2 and other titles all present game types that you might ordinarily play in a smoky bar. The only other title to stand out in the top ten is the kids’ MMO MilMo, which has broken past half a million MAU, though its stickiness has fallen to just three percent — whether that’s from players giving up or going to the destination site, we can’t tell.

Social developer Mob Science has struck again on the game scene, with a relatively new application by the name of Magic Mall. First catching our attention at the tail end of 2010 and again in one of our more recent emerging apps lists, the new title has grown slowly of late, stalling just shy of the 300,000 monthly active user mark.

A business sim centered around building a successful mall, Magic Mall is similar to an older game from Metrogames, Mall Dreams. Using a cute and cartoonish visual style, Magic Mall does differentiate itself slightly with curious limiting factors and a rather interesting social shopping mechanic, but as a whole feels like something we’ve all seen before, with a simplicity that just doesn’t compete with the ever growing depth of competing social games.

As with noted Mall Dreams, players of Magic Mall are tasked with creating a bustling source of overpriced goods that most people probably don’t need. Isn’t capitalism great? Anyway, players purchase and place various store fronts within their mall to attract customers. Over time, purchases will be made and the player will be allowed to collect the revenue.

In addition to stores, players can also decorate their space with everything from benches to trees. Though the game is not clear on the purpose or results, it appears that the purchase and placement of both stores and décor increases a sort of mall rating. Presumably, this works in the same way as in Nightclub City, meaning that the higher this rating, the more customers come to spend money.

While this has all been done before, the most unique element to Magic Mall is a sort of social treasure hunting feature dubbed “Shopping.” As one might expect, each store can be upgraded to provide greater value. In order to do so, however, users must not only pay a pretty penny, but must also acquire a collection of items. This works as when users need a friend’s help to build something in FarmVille (where users send each other construction materials or parts), but that is only part of the equation.

While users can gift each other items that are needed to upgrade stores (or purchase them using virtual currency), they can also be “shopped” for. Players are actually able to visit the stores of their friends and shop at them every so often by clicking on the stores themselves. When doing so, players can find experience, extra energy for performing more actions, or special items used for upgrading.

Each upgrade also requires specific items. For example, a chocolate factory will require things like milk, cocoa, and so on (all upgrades require five items). However, those upgrade items can only be found when shopping at that same type of store in a friend’s mall. It’s certainly an interesting way to interconnect friends, but even so, can’t overcome the rest of the game’s simplicity.

For the record, there is nothing wrong with simplicity. However, something can be “simple” yet still be deep, meaning that while players can understand it easily, there are a lot of options and ways for them to play. That just doesn’t seem to be the case here. Users build a few stores, collect when they’re ready, and shop at friends’ places the same way. It’s shallow, rinse and repeat play with no real reward for doing so other than just doing more of the same.

A further difficulty is that players are actually limited in the number of decorative items they can purchase based on level. Limiting stores is understandable, specific items based on level, but stopping players from decorating seems inadvisable, given that this is a major part of gameplay on Facebook.

In the end, Magic Mall is technically sound, but feels very average compared to recent social games that both provide more depth and give more rewards to their players.

CityVille isn’t the only new game from Zynga — it’s also working on another one called Mafia Nation, that it’s been asking its existing players to apply to become beta testers for, according to reader Frank B.

You can see the survey here. The game, according to the survey, has the following objective: “In Mafia Nation, it’s your crew against the world: build your team, defend your turf, and lead them to power and luxury… by any means necessary. Are you tired of rules? Time to step up and start making your own.” Following the logo and summary, the survey asks users how interested they’d be in playing, whether they’d like to be a beta tester, their age, and gender. Zynga declined to comment.

The original creative showed the name to be Crime Nation, but it was just recently changed to Mafia Nation.

That doesn’t sound so different from Mafia Wars, which is a text-based role-playing game. However, the isometric visuals of the logo more closely resemble the newer title Crime City, developed by Funzio, which combines role-playing with simulation game elements, like city-building and, at its best moments, resembles Grand Theft Auto. Since Crime City was one of the few big successes of 2010, it would fit Zynga’s modus operandi to emulate the game.

But for Zynga, which has proven itself expert at integrating concepts from a wide range of games with CityVille, Mafia Nation (surprisingly not yet called MafiaVille) could prove to be a yet more interesting iteration on the genre.

Update: Reader Megan Schaff points out that Zynga may not have used MafiaVille because a game with that name is already being created by Dandelion Apps. According to the web page, MafiaVille is “an isometric social game coming soon to Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, iPad, Windows Phone 7 & more!”

January 25th | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 is now sold out!

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 is Inside Network’s second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms. This one-day summit features industry leaders from every corner of the social app and game ecosystem.

Registrations to Inside Social Apps are now sold out.

Sign up for the waiting list here.

Who’s Speaking?

We’re honored to present the following confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011:

	Bret Taylor CTO, Facebook		Eric Chu Group Manager, Android Platform, Google
	Kristian Segerstrale Co-founder and CEO, Playfish (now part of EA)		Vish Makhijani SVP Business Operations, Zynga
	Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam		Peter Relan Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom (now part of Disney), and Investor		Jason Oberfest VP Social Apps, ngmoco:) (now part of DeNA)
	Rex Ng Co-Founder and CEO, 6waves		Deborah Liu Commerce Product Marketing, Facebook
	Sean Ryan EVP and GM Games, News Corp		Bill Gossman CEO, hi5
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Paul Bettner GM, Zynga with Friends
	Jens Begemann Co-founder and CEO, Wooga		Dennis Ryan EVP Worldwide Publishing, PopCap Games
	Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies		Carey Kolaja Senior Director, Digital Goods Operations, PayPal
	Raph Koster VP Creative Design, Playdom (now part of Disney)		Atul Bagga VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
	Manu Rekhi GM Games and Platform, MySpace		Martin Essl Strategic Software Partner Management, Sony Ericsson
	Matthaeus Krzykowski Founder, Xyologic		Asokan Thiyagarajan Dir. Platforms & Tech. Strategy, Samsung
	Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network		Kim-Mai Cutler Lead Writer, Mobile & Social Applications, Inside Network
	Eric Eldon Editor, Inside Network

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Social applications first emerged in 2007, and are today maturing into a global media ecosystem. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, followed by platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible.

Now, three and a half years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry, punctuated by numerous major acquisitions by the world’s leading media companies and developers. But now, new challenges are emerging, affecting big players and new entrants alike.

Inside Social Apps will investigate the latest trends and challenges for social applications, and look at what’s to come for developers throughout the space – including the growth of virtual goods and social applications on mobile devices.

What are the biggest uncertainties and opportunities facing the future of social games and applications in 2011, and who is leading the way?

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 takes place January 25th, 2011 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and brings together the world’s leading entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social app and game monetization.

Inside Social Apps will be a one-day summit led by Inside Network’s Eric Eldon and Justin Smith, and will take in-depth investigative approach to the day’s discussions. At Inside Social Apps, Inside Network will work alongside founders and executives of the top social networking, social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies to analyze the most important issues affecting the industry. Inside Social Apps is geared towards developers on Facebook, iPhone, Android, and emerging online social platforms.

Inside Social Apps will be a content-rich day of critical discussion, followed by an evening and nighttime of casual networking.

Register Now

The countdown has begun and Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 is just days away! We’re expecting a full house for the event — sign up for the waiting list now.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco at Inside Social Apps!

Another week has passed, and as with last week, companies in the social gaming space are continuing on strong. There were also some senior level hires. Joshua Dallman, the former lead designer for both Digital Chocolate and Playdom, is now head of game design and production now for Brooklyn Packet Co. And Andy Kleinman is being reported as the new VP of strategy and business development for MetroGames.

As always, if your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post.

And for those searching for new jobs, be sure to check out our Inside Network Job Board.

Here’s this week’s full list:

BringIt

• Jasim Qazi — Social gaming monetization company BringIt gave us the heads up on some new hires starting with Qazi, their newest web engineer. Prior to joining the team, he was a student at San Jose State University.
• Tim Berhsin — Formerly holding various positions at Voxbone, Bershin joins BringIt as a senior software engineer.
• Michael Burlando — BringIt also filled us in on an internal change as Burlando moves from director of engineering to VP of engineering.

Brooklyn Packet Co.

• Joshua Dallman — As noted prior, Joshua Dallman is now the head of game design and production at Brooklyn Packet Co. Prior to this he was a game design lead at Digital Chocolate, and before that, a game design lead at Playdom.

Digital Chocolate

• Jordi Martin — Now a server technical manager for Digital Chocolate, Martin was previously an enterprise architect at Sogeti.
• Matti Palosuo — Palosuo joins Digital Chocolate as a senior server engineer. Prior to this, he was a sound designer at Mr.Goodliving Ltd.

Kabam

• Jessica Alonso — Previously the chief web developer and designer at The Polyglot Project, Alonso is now a software engineer for front end web development at Kabam.
• Brian Schulman — Kabam gains a new quality assurance tester with Schulman, a former intern for Tech Policy Central.

LOLapps

• Gregory Eichholzer — Activity from LOLapps this week as Eichholzer joins the team as their new Flash animator intern. Before this, Eichholzer was an animator and task manager for Animotion, Inc.
• Meng Her — LOLapps hosts an internal change as Her moves up from Flash animator and illustrator to senior Flash animator and illustrator.

Metrogames

• Andy Kleinman — Another one of the major hires this week, Andy Kleinman is now VP of strategy and business development for MetroGames. Previously, he was the GM of Latin America & US Hispanic over at Playdom.

MindJolt

• Loung Tam — Now a developer for MindJolt, Tam was previously a Flash developer at MySpace.

Playfish

• Andrew Chan — Technically in internal shift, Chan becomes a senior product manager under the Playfish tag. He was previously a corporate development associate under the Electronic Arts tag.

PopCap

• Kim Amsberry — Leaving her role as a program manager at Microsoft, Amsberry is now a senior technical program manager at PopCap.

RockYou!

• Greg Kearney — Now general manager of the Redwood City game studio for RockYou, Kearney was previously president at Tirnua, Inc.

SVnetwork

• Michael Wade — Updates from SVnetwork this week as Wade becomes their new Midwest director. Before this, he was the sales director of major accounts at PointRoll.

Wooga

• Francesco Tosato — Another internal change, this time for wooga. Tosato moves from international online marketing intern to a product manager.

Zynga

• Bhavani Prasad — Now a senior artist for Zynga, Prasad was a senior Flash animator at BIG Animation (I) Pvt. Ltd.
• Mark Montuya — Previously an assistant production manager for LucasArts, Montuya is now an associate producer for Zynga.
• Isaac Orloff — Orloff joins Zynga as a 2D artist. Prior to this, Orloff was a freelance visual development artist at Bully Entertainment.
• Touch Ungboriboonpisal — Zynga gains a new software engineer with Ungboriboonpisal, a former senior developer for Mediatrope.
• Ashley Grabill — Also from LucasArts, former publishing assistant Grabill joins Zynga as a talent coordinator.

Gameloft has recently launched a new title on Facebook by the name of Mini Kings. Only a few weeks old, this medieval-themed title has been growing steadily, with over 212,000 MAU and 28,000 DAU today.

At first glance, the growth is surprising, because Mini Kings gives off the impression of being yet another farming concept in a long, tired list of the same. But while farming is part of the Gameloft title, it’s just that: a part. With other elements that reflect city-builders, and even some strategy in the style of Nanostar Siege, the game is actually more interesting than one might initially think.

The idea behind Mini Kings is for players to build up a bustling kingdom. In many respects, the game is comparable to My Kingdom, but with a bit more control in the details. That in mind, the basics of building up one’s realm comes in three parts: money, peasants, and defenses.

Gold, of course, is still key to all, so it’s best to begin with the farming elements of this app. Players plow land, plant seeds, and harvest the crops for coin when they’re ready. In addition to this, trees and animals can be placed and harvested periodically as well.

Before the groans begin, however, farming is not necessarily the best income. Players are able to further augment revenue with actual businesses, constructing everything from a marketplace to a blacksmith and earning sizable amounts of currency every few hours. However, each business will require peasants to actually function.

Though there is no actual “population” stat like in, say, City of Wonder, players must construct homes, each of which automatically adds a peasant. Once built, users can drop the peasant atop any industrial building to improve its efficiency. Each of these business buildings must have at least one peasant to function, but having more working in it will reduce the amount of time it takes for it to produce coin. However, there is a cap on how many peasants can work in any given building.

Beyond farms, houses and businesses, players can also construct a variety of military buildings. These will allow users to unlock different military units that can be placed in the kingdom as defenses. Swordsmen, archers, mages, towers, and even traps can all be built and placed in the space. As military buildings are placed and levels gained, new research that enhances the units also becomes available.

This is where the most interesting part of Mini Kings comes into play: users can send their units to attack their friends. During an attack, players will take their units and place them on a grid, from which they’ll walk in a straight line toward the enemy city (players can also temporarily “rent” more soldiers, at a cheaper cost, for the duration of the battle). In order to win, a set number of friendly units must make it past the defenses.

As for defense, at the front of each kingdom is a walled-off entrance. The idea is to place defenses so that there are no gaps in the grid spaces leading up to the kingdom. As the enemy reaches a unit or defense structure, they’ll duke it out until one is down. However, with different stats for all units, researched abilities, hidden traps, and so on, laying out defenses is actually a lot of fun.

As a final note, any destroyed structures must be repaired at the cost of in-game coin, and injured units can be healed by friends that visit.

Battle is an obviously innovative feature for Mini Kings, but it’s also one of the biggest disappointments. Even though players receive fiscal and experience rewards for winning battles, they’re severely limited in their range, because they can only attack friends. There’s no way to battle against other users, unlike titles such as City of Wonder or Mafia Wars, in which half the fun is trying to be the top dog in the game as a whole. It’s all fine and well to fight against friends, but it becomes boring to constantly compete against the same people over and over again.

Another quirky social element is that buildings require friends to send each other special materials to construct. This isn’t unusual or even a big deal in its own right, but rather than reserving the mechanic for special buildings, even lowly industrial buildings do this in Mini Kings — nor do they mention the requirement until the player buys it. This is not a huge deal, but still a bit obnoxious.

Regardless of complaints, Mini Kings is actually a pretty cool game, especially with the attack and defense aspects. That said, it limits both progression and social interaction more than necessary. Sure, expanding battle to encompass everyone might lead to the player’s kingdom being under siege more often, but there are a multitude of ways this could be mitigated (alliances, special items, free repairs, etc.). All the same, however, the game is still very new, and improvements are very likely already on the way.