Inside Social Games is changing its reviews policy today to include a three-point ratings scale organized by three simple words: Play, Skip and Wait.

What It Looks Like

The scale is based on time. The most important piece of information ISG can provide is whether or not a game is worth a reader’s time. It takes time to get into a new social game — setting up the permissions, going through the tutorial, adding friends, etc. Even the simplest games with the cleanest interfaces and shortest tutorials take a good five minutes from first click to actual gameplay — and with so many social games launching on Facebook and Google+, that might be time our readers don’t have.

A Play rating means it’s worth the reader’s time to play the game.

A Skip rating means that a game isn’t worth the reader’s time.

A Wait rating indicates that the game might not be worth the reader’s time right now, but it has the potential to grow into a game that earns a Play rating.

Our reviews will still provide gameplay analysis, screenshots, currently monthly and daily active user totals as tracked by our AppData traffic monitoring service and any context the developer can provide if we’re able to reach them. As almost all games now monetize in the same ways and leverage the same social features, we won’t make mention of these components unless a game does something new or interesting with them. We will share a bit of opinion on a game based on our personal response to it — but our reviews are intended as interpretive analysis rather than stand-up comedy.

How It Works

How we pick a rating for a game is based on our approach to social games overall. In contrast to consumer-facing video game publications like Games.com or Gamezebo, we’re analysts that cater to an audience of developers, investors and other industry insiders that need information to make informed decisions — not just about what they’ll play for fun, but what they’ll do with their own companies.

From this perspective, we judge social games based on one question: “Will this work?” That can mean several things for a game: It monetizes, it finds traction on its platform, or the developer is supporting a game so thoroughly that we can expect to see it everywhere for the next year. Notice that we don’t bother to say that a game is “good;” that term is too subjective to have any meaning to our readers. We’ve seen plenty of “good” games on Facebook fail to monetize, fail to attract an audience or go offline after barely six months. Being “good” isn’t a guarantee that a game will work.

The flip side of that is that we won’t tell you a game is “bad” based on the fact that we don’t like it. Plenty of games do things we don’t like such as spamming us, hitting us with pay walls right after the tutorial, playing repetitive sounds, cloning a different game we’ve already spent months playing, etc. Games may also just fail to appeal to us because of art style or genre. None of these things would necessarily stop a game from working, however, unless something is bad enough to be distracting or damaging to the core gameplay experience.

We will tell you when a game isn’t ready. Many times in 2010, our reviewers would encounter games in the early beta stage where graphics are missing, social features aren’t optimized and sometimes monetization isn’t even implemented yet. In 2011, Zynga started providing hands-off press demos of new games just days before launch, sometimes with content that we couldn’t expect to see when the game went live because the developer would decide to cut it based on early user feedback. We could wait these games out and return to them when we think they might be ready — like when a developer “officially” launches the game or once it hits a certain number of monthly active users. But so many games get lost in the shuffle as new titles launch that this approach is sloppy. It’s better we see the game in the conditions we found it (via social discovery, word-of-mouth or sudden spike in AppData activity) and report back to the readers in a timely fashion.

Why We’re Doing It

We’ve gone back and forth over the concept of scoring games since the blog launched in 2008. At first, we used a 10-point scale derived from scores in sub-categories like “graphics” or “sound” that resembles the old methods used by traditional video games press. Sometime in 2009, the then-lead writer scrapped scores after deciding that the practice didn’t make much sense because most of the leading games came from the same pool of developers and each had relatively similar themes and standards of quality. We brought it back briefly at the end of 2011 in the short-lived “What we’re playing” articles; but these pieces lacked context and focus.

We’re trying it again because we feel social games deserve recognition beyond what they can earn for themselves in terms of traffic. The quality bar is higher now for social games than it was just 18 months ago and barriers to entry are rising on Facebook and Google+. While most of the leading game developers still hold top spots in traffic, some developers are taking risks in game design instead of just following whatever trend is hot right now (today, it’s casino games — this time last year it was citybuilders). There are also games that will never break the top 25 in MAU or DAU but can still be counted as successes because they find their audiences and monetize them well. Even without investor funding or hope of a successful exit, a game might still be “worth it” to our readers and a score the easiest way for us to help readers find those games.

The decision to avoid numbered scores reflects an overall attitude in video games journalism — numbers stopped having meaning when journalists stopped using all points on the scale. Score aggregators like Metacritic further obfuscate the actual quality of a game as it relates to the score. Also, as we’ve said before, social games change rapidly and a numbered score can’t possibly keep pace.

Scored reviews will start appearing on ISG today. There are currently no plans to apply the scoring system to mobile games on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps. As always, we invite reader feedback in the comments or via email at mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com.

Twice in the last month, we’ve seen studios come forward to criticize Zynga for being too inspired by their work.

Nimblebit, which recently won Game of the Year from Apple, said a forthcoming Zynga title called Dream Heights unfairly cribs from their hit Tiny Tower. Then this week Buffalo Studios said Zynga copied some user interface and design details from their bingo game.

Frustrating as it may be to indie studios, this has always been part of Zynga’s strategy. It’s almost silly to address it. As long as games from proven genres earn outsized returns compared to ones from unproven categories and the cost of losing or settling lawsuits remains low, developers will keep doing copycat games.

Zynga’s chief executive Mark Pincus even euphemistically referred to the practice in December’s IPO roadshow by saying: “We have a rule of thumb inside Zynga. For any category we launch a game in, we expect it to be three to five times the size of the then category leader.”

He reiterated again in an internal memo this week that:

Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways. They are all internet treasures because they all have specific and broad missions to change the world.

We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market. There are genres that we’re going to enter because we know our players are interested in them and because we want and need to be where players are. We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality.

Zynga does market research by looking at leading titles, designs similar games that don’t require a learning curve, optimizes them for monetization with its data prowess and then spends and cross-promotes relentlessly.

If Zynga’s titles appear too close to other games, it’s hard to take the company to task because of its deep pockets and fearsomely litigious history. Few small studios have the resources to pay for lawyers, especially against a company that has been so historically eager to sue others for theft of trade secrets and copyright infringement.

It also helps that the intellectual property system is quite fragmented for protecting games. Copyright covers the art and potentially the underlying source code while trademarks covers the brand and logo. Patents, the weakest form of protection for game developers, can cover code and mechanics.

Another factor is that as the gaming industry has moved away from a packaged goods model toward a highly iterative and serviced-based one, it makes less sense to pursue protection like patents. Like in the broader consumer Internet industry, waiting at least two to four years for a patent is absurd considering that a hit game can flame out in months.

The more interesting question to ask here is whether Zynga’s approach can do as well on mobile platforms as it has on Facebook. Zynga does not have an outsized lead on either Android or iOS. It has 13 million daily active users, which is very respectable. But it’s not enough to produce network effects that would shut out rival games from the top 10. Unlike Facebook, which signed a five-year agreement with Zynga, Apple does not have a vested interest in seeing Zynga achieve user growth targets. Smartphones also support more diversity than Facebook. The past month has proved that indie developers like Imangi Studios can nail freemium in more than casual sim or mafia games too.

Here we take a look back at various Zynga social and mobile titles, and whether they worked or not according to AppData statistics and ranking history from App Annie:

Mafia Wars and Mob Wars: Launched in August of 2008, Mafia Wars triggered one of the several lawsuits Zynga went on to become ensnared with. Creator David Maestri and his company Psycho Monkey LLC went onto sue Zynga for infringing on his creation Mob Wars and settled for a reported $7 to 9 million. (But it’s also worth noting that Maestri had to settle with his former employer SGN because he launched the game while working for them when they were called FreeWebs.)

After Zynga launched Mafia Wars, it went on to reach around 10 million monthly active users in about half a year, while Maestri’s game stalled at about 2.5 to 3 million MAU.

PetVille, Happy Pets and Pet Society: Launched in December 2009, PetVille riffed on a long history of casual, animal care-taking games that have existed long before the Facebook platform even launched. It followed Playfish’s Pet Society, which came out more than a year before in the fall of 2008, and Crowdstar’s Happy Pets, which launched the previous month. Both PetVille and Happy Pets saw decent starts but then leveled off while Pet Society kept on growing.

Cafe World and Restaurant City: Zynga’s restaurant sim game Cafe World came out in September 2009 after Playfish’s Restaurant City had accumulated 16 million monthly actives. It added steps by making players chop up or dice ingredients before cooking dishes and requiring users to add friends as neighbors if they wanted to expand their restaurants. Restaurant City actually hit its peak usage two months after Zynga launched its game before it began a slow and steady decline. Cafe World also peaked shortly after at around 32 million monthly actives.

Gardens of Time and Hidden Chronicles: It’s not surprising that Zynga would want to get into the hidden object genre after Disney Playdom’s Gardens of Time topped growth charts for nearly five months in a row. It is a little surprising that it took Zynga so long to do it, however. Hidden object game designer Cara Ely was brought on at Zynga in July — three months after Gardens of Time’s launch — and it wasn’t until January 2012 that Hidden Chronicles saw the light of day. In addition to similar presentation of story elements, Hidden Chronicles also cribs Gardens of Time’s decoration-based progression system.

Mobile has been a more interesting story this past year because Zynga actually started out as the underdog on iOS. Several games like Playforge’s Zombie Farm and Storm8′s Restaurant Story were taking genres that social gaming companies had nailed on Facebook and were executing them well on the iPhone. Nevertheless, Zynga managed to accumulate 13 million daily active users by year-end, largely because of its acquisition of Words With Friends maker Newtoy, but also because it started getting its core franchises right on mobile.

Zynga Poker and Texas Poker:

Poker is a more than 150-year-old game, so it’s hard to say that any company could own it. However, Russian developer Kamagames said Zynga copied user interface details from its hit Texas Poker early last year.

Zynga started fading out non-active players on the board and added a vertical bar to raise and lower bets. Before last year, Texas Poker was trouncing Zynga’s Poker game on the iOS grossing charts and consistently had a top 10 ranking. But in the spring, Zynga Poker began a steady climb and now outranks Kamagames’ title.

Tap Zoo, Tiny Zoo Friends and Dream Zoo: Pocket Gems had an undisputed run as one of the highest-earning developers last year after Tap Zoo held on to a top 10 grossing spot for about a year. Unsurprisingly, Zynga took note and launched Dream Zoo just ahead of Thanksgiving. It took the same zoo concept but added some complexity with feeding and washing games along with more levels for each of the animals. In anticipation of such a move, Pocket Gems phased out its old game Tap Zoo and launched a new version called Tap Zoo 2: World Tour.

None of the games have managed to hold onto a top 10 ranking. In fact, a different zoo game from developer TinyCo is actually the highest ranked one in the genre right now at #17. Dream Zoo remains at #44 and Tap Zoo 2 holds at #77. It looks like all of these companies effectively split the market.

Pocket Gems hasn’t complained, with chief operating officer Ben Liu telling us, “Look. Our games have copied extensively by many, many companies.” He added, “The way we can stay ahead of Zynga is by listening to our users and putting the best features in our game. Consumers are going to judge what’s the best product.” Pocket Gems has been busy launching a number of new games in the last few weeks like Tappily Ever After and Zombie Takeover.

This story originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

As we approach the end of 2011, Inside Social Games looks back at the biggest stories in the social games industry based on controversies and rumored controversies around everything from layoffs to sunsetted games.

While not necessarily the most popular articles among investors and developers, these stories and subjects tend to be repeated almost as often as the success stories of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, and other exits or expansions. In the case of rumors, these stories often couldn’t be independently verified or lacked enough substance to warrant a news report. Even so, some of them were persistent enough to merit mention here.

Zynga’s Stock Clawback Scandal – November, Unconfirmed
This year Zynga took some very poorly timed heat from a Wall Street Journal expose that claimed company CEO Mark Pincus pressured employees to return stock rights due to poor individual performance. Surfacing a month before the company’s hotly anticipated IPO, the article called Zynga’s corporate practices and long term ability to retain employees into doubt. While Zynga never denied the story, CNN did obtain a company memo that said the Wall Street Journal’s article was based on hearsay, but also specifically mentioning “meritocracy” as a core company value. We’ve since heard rumors that the alleged stock clawbacks were only directed at a very small number of employees that truly were under-performing. In the end, Zynga’s shares went on to be priced at $10, netting the company a billion dollars in its IPO and a market valuation of $7 billion. The company’s shares slipped after they began trading, and are now worth $9.75.

RockYou’s Dramatic Pivot – November
The year started off well for RockYou with the Playdemic acquisition and a new ad platform and partner publishing program. By mid-summer, however, it was clear that the Zoo World developer was in trouble even as it continued to expand via acquisition. The first of its partner-published games, Cloudforest Expedition, was delayed and eventually beaten to market by Zynga’s Adventure World. Overall traffic declined across most of RockYou’s owned-and-operated games despite a strong launch of Zoo World 2. By the time SVP of Games Jonathan Knight left the developer-publisher in late summer, rumors of planned layoffs began to circulate. RockYou CEO Lisa Marino confirmed just over a month later, adding that Playdemic would be sold back to its original owners and that Cloudforest developer Loot Drop was released from its contract. RockYou is currently claiming a profit for the final quarter; Zoo World 2 is showing a resurgence in traffic; Cloudforest Expedition remains unreleased, though Loot Drop has signed new agreements with other social game publishers.

Diner Dash Finished on Facebook – July
San Francisco-based PlayFirst began the year wtih big plans for bringing its IP to Facebook and a $9.2 million round of funding it secured at the end of 2010. Despite a solid launch and strong initial growth of its premier franchise, Diner Dash, the developer sunsetted the game after just eight months due to poor performance — the third failure in a row following Wedding Dash Bash and Chocolatier: Sweet Society. SVP of Games and General Manager Eric Hartness left the company around the time of the game’s demise and an unspecified number of employees were laid off not long afterward. At it stands now, the developer appears to have made a full scale retreat from social games, with a company representative telling Joystiq that PlayFirst will now focus on on the “mobile casual gaming space.”

Kabam’s Restructuring – December, Partially Confirmed
At the end of spring 2011, Kingdoms of Camelot developer Kabam closed an $85 million fourth round of funding to put toward ramping up its existing Facebook games and launching new ones. At the time that the funding was announced, Kabam said it had 400 employees across multiple studios — including a newly-opened San Francisco studio. Around August 2011, however, multiple anonymous tipsters told us that Kabam was preparing or had already begun rounds of layoffs. The stories seemed inconsistent as Kabam maintained a steady flow of hiring during this time period, and continued to launch new games. We observe, however, that Kabam sometimes launches games on Facebook that are neither branded nor announced — for example, Samurai Dynasty, which we first saw on our AppData charts in June — and then sunsets them if they fail to gain organic traction. These scrapped games could be cause for layoffs as could general restructuring. Kabam came out this month and announced the latter, claiming that fewer than 80 employees were affected. This contradicts the information provided by the tipsters, which place the number between 80 and 200. A spokeswoman tells us that Kabam currently has around 475 employees; the developer recently launched a licensed Godfather game on Google+ and on its own site.

Sticky Situation at Digital Chocolate – October, Unconfirmed
Once a major competitor to Zynga, Digital Chocolate was already losing ground at the beginning of 2011 despite launching new games Army Attack and Millionaire Boss and expanding onto mobile and Google+ with some of its older titles. As Millionaire Boss began to decline rapidly and planned updates to Army Attack were delayed, it came as no surprise to hear from a tipster who worked at the company that the developer was considering layoffs. A Digital Chocolate spokesperson denied any major layoffs when we contacted the developer in October, but a second source with knowledge of the company told us that Digital Chocolate’s social studio branch in San Mateo had been completely shut down due to rising user acquisition costs on Facebook. Additionally, this source says a failed publishing agreement with a first-time social game developer hurt Digital Chocolate’s ability to offset user acquisition costs. Digital Chocolate recently launched a new social game, Galaxy Life, on both its own site and on Facebook.

Vostu’s Most Litigated Form of Flattery – June to December
Brazilian social game developer Vostu made some ink in June this year when Zynga sued the company for copyright infringement, claiming Vostu had copied their games wholesale, right down to unintended glitches and mistakes. Vostu hit Zynga with a countersuit alleging Zynga had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a partnership or acquisition with it before Zynga’s initial lawsuit. The companies settled out of court this month, with Vostu agreeing to pay Zynga an unspecified amount in compensation and make changes to MegaCity, Café Mania, Pet Mania and MiniFazenda. Vostu is currently branching out and is on track to release more casual social games, thanks to its earlier acquisition of MP Game Studio. Vostu is also working on adding new features to its core social games, like the custom in-game radio stations it just added to MegaCity and MiniFazenda.

Sony Online Entertainment Exits Facebook – May
Sony Online Entertainment started off the year by publishing a tie-in Facebook game for its EverQuest II franchise and continuing to operate several games developed by independent studios. None of these games found much traction in the first months of 2011, and somewhere around May, SOE quietly walked away from Facebook. Its games were either abandoned completely or handed back to their developers, as was the case with Night Owl Games’ Dungeon Overlord. A spokeswoman for the publisher wouldn’t confirm that SOE is completely out of the social game industry, but did say that the company was trying to get back to its MMO roots.

Deep Realms Deep Sixed – June/July, Unconfirmed
Disney Playdom was just beginning to exit its moratorium on new game launches at the beginning of the year, first with Deep Realms and then with Gardens of Time. The latter completely eclipsed the former — and just about every other game Disney Playdom released this year, even the Disney-branded GnomeTown and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill — and so we weren’t surprised to hear rumors that the Deep Realms team had been trimmed down early on in the year as the developer shifted its attention to other ventures. Given Deep Realms’ current traffic, it’s unclear at this point if the game will survive Q1 2012.

Rocket Ninja’s Wrestler: Unstoppable Makeover – May
2D wrestling sim Wrestler: Unstoppable had a very outspoken and loyal fan following by the time the game was acquired by Rocket Ninja in 2010. It appears to be these same fans stirring up controversy around the developer’s updates to the title — mainly, the visual makeover from 2D to 3D with Rocket Ninja’s proprietary engine. Players cited numerous bugs and performance issues caused by the new engine as their main complaint and a petition was circulated, calling for a return to the game’s original visuals. Wrestler: Unstoppable went into a sharp decline around the end of September; Rocket Ninja announced a $7.5 million second round of funding in November to put toward scaling its 3D engine in social and mobile games.

Over the course of 2011, the Inside Social Games team reviewed more than 200 titles on the Facebook platform.

This year’s crop of games covered every genre from sports to casual to strategy, appealed to every type of Facebook gamer, from the most casual to the most hardcore and were the biggest and most popular games the platform has seen yet.

January

• Become a Forensic Crime Scene Investigator in Sony’s Catch a Killer
• Engage in Multiplayer Monster Battles in Broken Bulb’s Miscrits
• Train City Adds Another Rail Line to Facebook Gaming
• Try Your Thumb at Hybridizing Plants with GameHouse’s Secret Plant Society
• Make Sport Bets for Fun With MyBookie on Facebook & WP7
• Another MMO Comes to Facebook with MilMo
• Manga Castle Goes Retro With Social Mechanics in Magic Castle
• Roll the Facebook Dice with Bunco
• Poking Fun at the Monotony of Work on Facebook with Office Daze
• EA Sports PGA Tour Golf Challenge Comes to Facebook
• Numulus Brings Cross-Platform Puzzling to Facebook & iOS
• Care for Facebook Fuzzballs with Fuzzits!
• Totally Be a Spy on Facebook, While Still Shopping for New Clothes
• Rock Out With the Undead on Facebook in Zombie Mosh
• Raise a Kingdom for Facebook With Mini Kings
• Shop & Build with Magic Mall on Facebook
• Wild West Express Tries to Take Rail Trade Deeper on Facebook
• Atari’s Faeries vs. Darklings is a Magical Journey into Match-3 on Facebook
• Players Try to Make Games with Game Studio Story on Facebook
• Cooking Mama Brings an Iconic Restaurant Game to Facebook
• Dungeon Overlord Brings Nostagically Evil Strategy to Facebook
• Uncle Pennybags Gets a Makeover as Mr. Monopoly in EA’s Monopoly Millionaires
• The National Basketball Association Makes a Play for Facebook Users in NBA Legends
• Football Life Takes Another Approach to Sports RPGs on Facebook
• Fantasy Sports, Virtual Spaces, & Racing Meet in Title Town Racing on Facebook
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? On Facebook, Sort Of

February

• Redundancy Squelches Potential in Knight’s Quest on Facebook
• 3 Blokes Studios Launches Involved Space Adventure on Facebook, Galactic Trader
• Roll the Dice With Boss Vegas on Facebook
• KlickNation Moves to Space With Starship Command on Facebook
• Slaying Oblins With Your Friends in Buddy Rush for Facebook and iOS
• DNA Games Builds Up a Hit With Casino City
• Mososh Brings More RPG Originality to Facebook with Chronicles of Herenvale
• Zabu Studios and Reiner Knizia Roll the Dice with Pickomino
• Omgpop Asks Players to Draw My Thing
• Incrediland Encourages Friends to Breed New Animals, Using Lessons from Real-World Genetics
• Blue Fang Brings Iconic The Oregon Trail Title to Facebook
• A Closer Look at Monopoly Millionaires on Facebook
• 4mm Games, NBC, and Purina Pet Food Bring Dog Show Friends to Facebook

March

• Playdom’s Deep Realms Brings Classic RPG Play to Facebook
• With GunShine, SuperCell Looks to Create a More Social MMOG Off the Facebook Canvas
• MinoMonsters Brings Pokemon-Style Battling to Facebook
• Clipwire Games Finds Elbow Room for Sim Title Wild West Town on Facebook
• Wooga Launches Fifth Game on Facebook: Diamond Dash
• Playing Facebook Soccer With Footy!
• Sega Moves Into Social Games With SEGA Play! Baseball on Facebook
• Blast Away Opponents in Top-Down Shooter Twilight Wars on Facebook
• Can Dragon Age Legends Hook Core Gamers With Console Tie-Ins?
• DDTank: A Worms-Style Facebook-Integrated MMOG
• BitRhymes Grows on Facebook With Business Sim Game Salon Street
• Raising Knights and Slaying Trolls With Social Empires on Facebook
• Early Look: Poseidon’s Realm by Reiner Knizia
• Early Look: Dragon Age Legends
• Early Look: Real Time Battles in Battle Pirates
• Review: Fortune Stones – Match-3 for a new Decade
• Fortune League: Fantasy Sports League, EverQuest2 Style
• Digital Chocolate’s New Game Zombie Lane: Innovating Within the Facebook Sim Genre
• Gossip Girl: Social Climbing at Its Facebook Best

April

• Knight’s Story Straddles Multiple Gameplay Mechanics
• Empire Avenue Takes Socialization Market To Facebook
• UFC and THQ’s Longtime Brand Marriage Getting Results on Facebook
• Waku Waku Blitz Hopes To Break Into The Match-3 Genre With Highly Customizable Gameplay
• Jeopardy Rises As Wheel Of Fortune Falls, But Developer Believes In TV Game Show Game Appeal
• Early Look: Apollo 69 Fires Itself Onto Facebook
• Repair the Flow of Time in Playdom’s New Gardens of Time on Facebook
• An Early Look at Serf Wars Before a Big Gameplay Shift
• Sacred Seasons 2 MMORPG – a Re-telling of the Tale

May

• YouRiding Bodyboarding Battle Hopes For Easy Ride On Facebook With Competitive Play, Future Mobile Apps
• N.O.V.A. Elite’s User Figures Blast Into Orbit Thanks to Impressive Graphics and Competitive Gameplay
• NBA Dynasty No “Rival” to NBA Legend, Despite Shared License
• Farkle Pro’s Pay-to-Play Dice Rolling Sees Steady Growth
• Uno Boost Gets a Boost From Facebook Credits Integration
• Enrique Iglesias, Play With It! Paves Way For Social Music Gaming Platform
• Doomsday Defense Offers “Unrivalled” Tower Defense Gameplay in English Market
• Popular License and Historical Accuracy Keeps Pawn Stars: The Game Players Engaged
• Candy Dream Combines Magical Nostalgia With Realistic Supply and Demand Economy
• The Amazing Puzzle Factory Brings Traditional Pen and Paper Puzzles to Facebook
• Trade Nations Replicates Character-Driven Mechanics and Dynamic Economy of iOS Original
• The Flirt Game Exemplifies Stone Creek Entertainment’s Focus on Emerging Female Market
• Hero’s Blend of City-Building and Adventure Sees Steady MAU Growth but Variable DAU
• Fortune Creek Poker Gives Card Sharks a Place to Visit Instead of a Game to Play
• Army Attack Blends Real Time Strategy, Treasure Hunting Genres to Create Deep Singleplayer Experience
• Little Cave Hero Looks for Niche Gamers and a Good Laugh With Retro 8-Bit Style
• King.com’s Miner Speed Sees Growth On Facebook With Cross-Platform Strategy
• New Boyz: The World Experiments With Fan-To-Celebrity Engagement
• Who Wants to be a Millionaire Grows Through Competition, Limited Play

June

• Hero City Layers the Super Hero Genre on City-Building Gameplay, Developer Aiming to Build Distinctive Brand
• Jolt Online Brings Famed Championship Manager Series to Facebook with Balance Between Realism and Accessibility
• Tecmo Koei Gets Into Facebook Games With Cute but Conventional JollyWood
• Pac-Man for Facebook Provides Virtual Quarter-Swallowing Experience for Retro Arcade Game Fans
• Infinite Realms Aims to Cater to Hardcore Gamer Crowd with Realistic Graphics and Strong Story
• Pop Rocket Games Marries Social Sports to Text RPG Genre on Facebook in CopaSocca
• Shadow Fight Brings Stylized Martial Arts Combat to Social Games on Facebook
• Tetris Battle Reimagines Puzzle Classic with Quick-Fire Multiplayer Action
• Battle Cards: A Customizable Card Game for the Facebook Generation
• HotShot Takes Notes From PopCap to Bring Pachinko-Flavored Fun to Facebook
• Zoo World 2 Aims to Maintain RockYou’s Leadership on Facebook While Innovating in Zoo Genre
• Bingo Adventure Provides Real-Time Virtual Social Club Gaming
• Tea4Friends Sees Strong Growth Even In Crowded Restaurant Sim Genre
• City Wars Fights a War on Two Fronts With City-Building and Military Combat Gameplay
• FishHunt Explores Under-Developed Fishing Genre, Focuses on Expansion According to Player Feedback
• Richard Garriott’s 3D Portalarium Plugin Appears in A Mystical Land
• Trials of Elsword Experiments With Demoing A Full MMOG on Facebook
• A Better World Social Game Encourages Real World Good Deeds, Punishes Lazy Players
• PyramidVille on Facebook Sees Strong Growth After Round of Funding

July

• MindJolt’s Kamikaze Race Takes the Minimalist Approach to Graphics, Social Features and Monetization
• Pac-Man S Powers Up an Arcade Favorite, Lags Behind Other Pac-Man IP on Facebook
• My Country Lets Players Build Nations, Game Builds Impressive User Base
• Pet Tales Makes Caring for Puppies and Kittens a Walk in the Park on Facebook
• Social Point’s Flying Dog Gets by on Bare Bones Gameplay
• Camelot: The Game Mixes Swords and Strategy, Strong Despite Show’s Renewal Prospects
• Dreamland Conjures a Unique Board Game Adventure
• ESPN Sports Bar & Grill Serves Up Team Spirit
• StreetRally Rolls Off of the Assembly Line Onto Facebook
• Clash of the Dragons Deals Collectible Card Combat on Facebook
• Roman Taxi: Royal Era Puts a Spin on City-Building Fare
• Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy Assembles an Impressive Army of Users on Facebook
• Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire Boss is Moving Up in the Business World on Facebook
• The A-List Gives Facebook Users a Brush with Fame on Facebook
• GnomeTown Invites Residents to Party, Pillage and Pummel
• Platinum Life: Country Has Rough Start, Potential for Social Gamers Who Like Country Music
• Slotomania Sees Traffic Resurgence on Facebook Following Playtika Acquisition
• Weeds Social Club Joins Both Budding Marijuana Genre And Saturated Farming Sim Genre on Facebook
• Martial Arts Masters Challenges Players to Take on the World and Risk Experience Points
• Bejeweled Clone Biotronic sees a Resurgence of Players as Developer Moves onto Mobile
• Bingo Blitz Grows on Facebook Through Focus on the Game’s Fundamentals
• KlickNation Grows Futuristic Wild West Social Game Six Gun Galaxy
• MapleStory Adventures Launches on Facebook Today

August

• Kabam Officially Announces Edgeworld for Facebook Following Google+ Launch
• Collapse! Blast for Facebook Is A Chip Off An Old Block
• Megaband Gets Players to Tune in, Hits the Charts
• The Island: Castaway on Facebook Makes Life a Beach
• An Early Look at Words With Friends for Facebook
• Divinitiz: The Offerings Rush Demands a Sacrifice of Time on Facebook
• 1 vs 100 Puts Facebook Players on the Spot For Virtual Cash
• Fashion Designer for Facebook Models Franchise Expansion
• Crazy Bit Gets a Big Response From Its S.O.S. on Facebook
• Deal or No Deal Cashes in on Facebook’s TV Game Show Genre
• Wooga’s Magic Land Mixes Kingdom Building and Monster Slaying
• Parking Wars 2 Puts Majesco on the Sequel Bandwagon
• ‘Mid-Core’ Aviator from LandShark Takes Flight on Facebook
• BeTomorrow’s RocketBird Still Flying High on Facebook
• Journey of Moses for Facebook Is a Social Take on the Old Testament
• Facebook Welcomes Social Game Hello Adventure From Free Lunch Design
• 6waves Lolapps Births Baby & Me on Facebook
• Stick Run Fills the Stands with Endless Running Fans on Facebook
• Imba’s Gladelings for Facebook Whisks Players Away to a Land of Bears and Caves
• Monster Fusion Brings a Twist to the Facebook Collection Genre

September

• GameHouse Aims Blast at Facebook’s Top 10 Social Game Developers by DAU
• Adventure Slots for Facebook Spins a Tale
• Birds of a Feather Go Together in Fluffy Birds Flash on Facebook
• Ludia Wants to Know: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
• Developer Making Fun Takes on the Tale of Noah’s Ark for Facebook
• GameShow Slot Machines Doubles Its Ways to Play on Facebook
• BrainJewel from TribePlay is a Facebook Puzzle Game Fit for a Pharaoh
• 6waves Lolapps and Electrolab Take Facebook Gamers to Fight Camp
• DoubleDown Casino Raises the Stakes in Facebook Gambling Games
• Taking Baby Out of Corner, Social Game Universe Puts Dirty Dancing Game on Facebook
• iOS Hit Baseball Superstars Takes the Field on Facebook
• Jungle Jewels Flash Matches Classic Puzzle Gameplay with Power-Ups on Facebook
• Sin City Holdem Is Facebook’s Latest Poker Star

October

• Heart Shaped Games’ Hero Generations Will Make You Famous on Facebook
• Kixeye’s War Commander Demands More From Facebook Users Than Most Social Games Dare
• Ravenskye City Takes Flight on Facebook Before Ravenshire Castle is Built
• Spry Fox Targets Facebook, Google+ With Compelling Kindle Game
• Crowdstar Enters Facebook Hardcore Strategy Genre With Wasteland Empires
• Metrogames’ Coco Girl Glams Up Facebook Fashion Game Scene
• A Closer Look at Zynga’s First Full Sequel for Facebook, Mafia Wars 2
• Airport City From 6waves Lolapps Lands on Facebook
• The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a Brings Popular Sitcom’s Favorite Game to Facebook
• Dexter: Slice of Life on Facebook Makes a Blood Pact Between Game and Hit Show
• The Vampire Diaries Sucks In Players In Facebook Game Debut
• Interior Design With a Heart in the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game for Facebook
• House of Fun: Slot Machines Goes For a Spin With Facebook’s Casino Game Crowd
• Spa Life From FreshPlanet Pampers Players on Facebook
• iWin Expands Its Facebook Game Show Tie-in Roster with $100,000 Pyramid
• 6waves Lolapps Sews an Undead Farm Simulation on Facebook with Zombie Island
• Bingo Bash Powers Up a Classic Game of Chance on Facebook
• Pet City for Facebook Lets Players Make the Purrfect Pet Pal and Pad
• Beachtown Combines Sun, Sand, Surf, and Social Gaming on Facebook
• Turn-Based Strategy Game Zombiees! Invades Facebook
• Zombie Misfits From Nexon Is a Facebook Defense Game to Die For
• Cheech and Chong’s Animated Game Lights Up on Facebook
• Pool on Facebook: Simple But Highly Social

November

• Zynga’s CastleVille Launching This Month
• OMGPOP Expands Facebook Offerings With HTML5 Based Gem Rush
• The First 18 Minutes of Zynga’s CastleVille
• Woodland Heroes Brings the Fun of Battleship-style Strategy Gaming to Facebook
• Q-Games Brings its Acclaimed PlayStation Tower Defense Game PixelJunk Monsters to Facebook
• Bossa Studios Makes its Godzilla Sized Mark on Facebook Games with Monstermind
• Supercell’s Facebook Action RPG Gunshine.net Comes Out (of Beta) Shooting
• GameDuell’s Puzzler Bubble Speed is a Pop Hit with Facebook Gamers
• GCrest’s Owlbear Garden Cultivates a Social Fantasy World
• Fruit Ninja Frenzy Brings Hit Mobile Game to Facebook with Juicy New Gameplay
• Triviador is a Facebook Strategy Game That Asks Who Will Rule the World?
• Adult Swim’s Flash Game Hemp Tycoon Crops Up on Facebook
• Vostu’s Gol Mania Scores a Goal for Realtime Soccer Gameplay on Facebook
• A&E’s Storage Wars Fights for Space in Your Facebook Gaming Rotation
• MindJolt’s Bubble Atlantis for Facebook Shoots onto the Match-3 Puzzle Game Scene
• Bonfire’s Hooked Reels in Card Game Fans on Facebook
• Mission: Impossible Game Goes Live on Facebook in Advance of Ghost Protocol Film
• Chef Quest Turns up the Heat on Facebook Cooking Games
• Tetris Online’s Feevo Blaze for Facebook Adds Some Heat to Puzzle Game Recipes
• Puzzle Adventures from Ravensburger Wants its Piece of the Facebook Puzzle Game Action

December 

• Baseball Game Homerun Heroes Goes to Bat on Facebook for 6waves Lolapps
• Gamzee’s HTML5-based Skyscraper City Breaks Ground on Facebook
• Nexon Christens Wonder Cruise on Facebook
• Being Human Game Brings Syfy’s Supernatural Drama to Facebook
• Men vs. Women for Facebook Puts a Militaristic Spin on the Battle of the Sexes

With shares dipping 5%, Zynga’s $1 billion initial public offering Friday shows that there’s still a long way to go for the company that legitimized free-to-play social games in Western markets.

Following South Korea’s Nexon, Zynga is the second initial public offering from a gaming company in the last week that has seen its shares dip below the initial price. Unlike coupon site Groupon, which is still trading above its offer price, both Zynga and Nexon have comparable publicly-traded companies like video game publishers Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, against which revenue and profit multiples can be benchmarked. (Nevermind the fact that Zynga is profitable and Groupon is not.) Given that those companies have struggled to maintain investor in the last three years as confidence as mortar-and-brick retail sales dip, it’s easier to understand how Zynga is facing skepticism over more than just its free-to-play model. On top of that, uncertainty about the stability of the European Union has rattled investors in broader equity markets.

The consolation from Zynga’s day-one performance may be that the developer and its underwriters priced the offering effectively enough that the company didn’t leave money on the table for investors to pocket by immediately turning around and selling shares.

The real question is, where to next? The key to life after IPO for Zynga will be growth — on mobile, in international markets, and on alternative social game platforms outside of Facebook.

Mobile: Will There Be a Zynga of iOS or Android?

The most promising opportunity for independence from Facebook lies on iOS and Android, where Google and Apple have built attractive, fast-growing ecosystems for the same kind of games that are the heart of Zynga’s original business. Zynga started the year as an underdog with Storm8′s Farm Story and Playforge’s Zombie Farm beating the companion to its blowout hit FarmVille and a group of Siberian developers running circles around their poker app.

But with gradual optimization, a savvy and cheap acquisition of Words With Friends-maker Newtoy, and a promising launch in Dream Zoo have helped Zynga come around. It has 13 million daily actives on Android and iOS — a number that is sure to grow with the fracas around Alec Baldwin’s addiction to Words With Friends. Although there is no data to know for sure, Zynga probably has more daily active users on mobile devices than any other developer except for Rovio Mobile, which says it has 30 million daily actives across all platforms.

In 2012, we’ll find out if that becomes a big enough business to help the company diversify outside of Facebook in a meaningful way.

Ballpark figures have us putting high-grossing iOS games at between $1 and 3 million a month and there are several publicly traded mobile gaming companies that pulled in between $7 and 19 million in the quarter ending in September. That gives us a handful of privately-held companies with similarly-ranked games that are likely bringing in between $50 and 100 million in annualized revenue.

At this point with six titles in the iOS top grossing 100 in the U.S., Zynga is probably one of those. Then you have to consider that Android and iOS may be poised to have a larger combined footprint than Facebook in the next 12 months. The two platforms have 450 million cumulative device activations or sales behind them. (That number doesn’t deduplicate consumers who have replacement devices.)

One drawback, however, with mobile platforms is that neither Android or iOS seems structured to produce a winner-take-all environment in the way that Facebook has been. Apple certainly isn’t going to sign a five-year agreement guaranteeing Zynga the same kinds of advantages and growth targets that Facebook has. Plus, a variety of games can flourish on the iPhone from casual, resource management games to console-quality RPGs and first-person shooters.

International: Looking Toward Asia

Zynga is also starting to experiment with pushing its titles abroad into Asia. But those markets are extraordinarily competitive with homegrown incumbents and very different rules and regulations. This is especially true in China, where Facebook is banned and Zynga has had to go with Tencent instead. (Not that Tencent is unattractive –  its network of platforms boasts 700 million monthly actives to Facebook’s 850 million and the company told us in September that its top title is earning $1.6 million per month.) Sina Weibo, the new social networking darling that has quickly captured China’s white collar and college educated class the way Facebook originally did, is only just beginning to build its third-party platform.

South Korea and Japan also have a very mature social and mobile games industry. To succeed there, Zynga will need local studios and hyper-localized versions of its core franchises. It may even need to launch completely new franchises, as Zynga’s current wheelhouse of games covers genres that are already saturated on Asian networks like city-building and farming. Other Zynga games, like FrontierVille (a.k.a. Pioneer Trail) or CastleVille, would probably be too hard to adapt to an Asian audience given the heavy Western cultural influences in both games.

So far, Zynga has established studios in Europe and Asia but we still see the company relying primarily on Facebook for distribution. For example, the developer’s last three major launches — CastleVille, Mafia Wars 2, Empires & Allies — were all localized in more than 10 languages on Facebook from day one. Meanwhile, social networks in Asia are only just now getting releases of older Zynga games and in some cases, those games are failing.

Case in point: Zynga Japan — currently led by former Tecmo Koei CEO Kenji Matsubara — reportedly sunsetted both FarmVille (Farmvillage) and Treasure Isle (Treasure Island) on Japan’s Mixi social network and has yet to make any major game announcements for networks other than Facebook. In China, where Zynga has a studio in Beijing, the developer launched a version of CityVille called Zynga City on Tencent’s Open Platform, first with the Pengyou and Q-Zone game networks. But this game is one among many city-building games. Zynga’s Beijing studio, formed through the acquisition of XPD Media, is also more Western-facing for now.

As far as we know, Zynga has made no moves onto other international social game networks like Orkut or VK.net. The developer has made acquisitions in Europe, but hasn’t formally announced a regional office to oversee expansion in the region.

Alternative Platforms: Will Google+ Work?

The third area of new growth could be on alternative platforms like Google+. While early Facebook rivals like MySpace have declined so much so that Zynga has pulled its games off those platforms, other networks have been gaining traction. For example, Google+ already has two of Zynga’s larger franchises — Texas HoldEm Poker and CityVille. We don’t have any data though on how well those games are actually doing compared to Facebook, but the increasing number of social game developers launching on the platform suggests that G+ may be viable.

Zynga is also trying to grow its own platform off Facebook by launching a games platform, Zynga Direct (also called Project Z or Z-Live). But we see Facebook’s influence there too, as Zynga made an effort to point out the service’s integration with Facebook Connect at its Unleashed event this fall. However, it may be possible to play Zynga games on Zynga Direct without a Facebook account, which would be another step toward independence. The success of an independent Zynga platform depends on how much of its existing Facebook and mobile audience the developer can take with it when the service launches — and we don’t even know if that will be in 2012.

Facebook: Is it Still Possible to Grow?

Facebook — Zynga’s greatest ally and number one weakness — is the one place where future growth is largely out of Zynga’s control. As a games platform, the social network no longer provides developers an ecosystem that can consistently sustain rapid growth. Though new social games still continue to launch on the platform, we’re not seeing the kinds of traffic Zynga enjoyed on Facebook in 2008 and 2009. Rising costs in development and user acquisition have led some to believe that the platform is no longer a place where new developers can find success by copying what Zynga has done in the past.

Developers’ strategies on the platform are starting to adapt to these changes, which could open up new growth areas. For example, Zynga rivals EA and Ubisoft have used it to leverage major video game franchises by creating companion and standalone social games married to those franchises (e.g. The Sims Social, Ghost Recon Commander, etc.). Ubisoft and others are exploring licensed media properties like TV shows as means of generating traction for new social games. Lastly, mid-market and small developers are producing niche genre social games with very loyal audiences and much higher monetization rates than Zynga’s games.

Zynga has explored all three of these areas with its game releases in the last year: The company has used the Words With Friends franchise to launch a growing companion social game. It also experimented with content releases for major media brands and celebrities to drive engagement in its existing games. Zynga has also launched some games in new genres, like strategy combat game Empires & Allies. Zynga will likely experiment more with these approaches in 2012, perhaps even migrating new users gained in mobile and international markets back to Facebook or onto its own games platform.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Games Cafe, 6waves Lolapps, Liquid Entertainment, Acquinity Interactive, King.com, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Electronic Arts, Natural Motion Games and Jelli.

• Game Programmer
• Social Game Designer

• Senior Game Engineer for a Popular Social Gaming Company
• Product Manager for Popular Social Gaming Company
• Support Engineer – Browser and Social Games

• Social Games Programmer
• Social Games Designer

• Account Executive – Online Marketing
• Director of Operations – Online Marketing
• Marketing Coordinator – Online Marketing
• Senior Affiliate Manager – Online Marketing

• PR Executive – King.com
• Consumer Research Executive – King.com
• Marketing Communications Executive – King.com

• Digital Product Manager
• User Acquisition Analytics Manager

• Technical Director, Mobile

• Customer Acquisition Manager
• Lead Programmer
• Design Lead / Manager

• Principal Software Engineer – Platform Engineer
• Software Engineer – Frontend HTML

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at 6waves Lolapps, Games Cafe, Liquid Entertainment, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Natural Motion Games, Electronic Arts, Jelli, Acquinity Interactive and King.com.

• Senior Game Engineer for a Popular Social Gaming Company
• Product Manager for Popular Social Gaming Company
• Support Engineer – Browser and Social Games

• Game Programmer
• Social Game Designer

• Social Games Programmer
• Social Games Designer

• Customer Acquisition Manager
• Lead Programmer
• Design Lead / Manager

• Technical Director, Mobile

• Principal Software Engineer – Platform Engineer
• Software Engineer – Frontend HTML

• Digital Product Manager
• User Acquisition Analytics Manager

• Account Executive – Online Marketing
• Director of Operations – Online Marketing
• Marketing Coordinator – Online Marketing
• Senior Affiliate Manager – Online Marketing

• PR Executive – King.com
• Consumer Research Executive – King.com
• Marketing Communications Executive – King.com

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between October 31st and November 5th.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods.

Monday, October 31st:

• With 60M Monthly Actives, Outfit7 Hints at Powering Distribution For Other Mobile Developers
• Flurry Sees 2.6B App Downloads This Month on iOS, Android
• More Details on Inside Social Apps 2012 – February 8th and 9th in San Francisco
• Flurry Launches New Ads to Bring Users Back to Apps They’ve Already Downloaded

Tuesday, November 1st:

• Emerging Top Paid iOS Apps: Zombies, Zombies and More Zombies
• Gameloft’s iOS FPS Modern Combat 3 Blows Up on the App Store
• Emerging Top Grossing Apps: Modern Combat, Booyah’s MyTown 2 and Game Insight
• The New Alternative to UDIDs Seems to Be The MAC Address, But Privacy Issues Still Loom
• GREE Says it Will Launch New Global Mobile-Social Gaming Platform Using OpenFeint Next Year

Wednesday, November 2nd:

• Vector Unit Races to iOS with Watercraft Racing Title Riptide GP
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Natural Motion, King.com, TinyCo and More
• Emerging Free iOS Apps: Assassin’s Creed, Adobe Carousel and Cut the Birds
• Gameloft Earnings Rise 17% to $55.9M in Third Quarter
• Ngmoco’s Young Gives a Saucy Rejoinder to Mobage Critics as Android Gaming Network Comes Out of Beta

Thursday, November 3rd:

• Capcom Sees $77M In Revenue From Mobile-Social Gaming Unit Through Year Ending in March
• More Details on Tapjoy’s New Direct-to-Consumer Play — A “Personal App Marketplace”
• Android Grows to 43%, While Apple Holds at 28% in U.S. Smartphone Market Share
• Glu Mobile’s Smartphone Revenues Climb to $9.7M in Third Quarter

Friday, November 4th:

• New Hires in Mobile: GREE, Gameloft and Tapjoy
• Ayopa’s W.E.L.D.E.R. Spells Out New Twist on iOS Word Games
• Top Emerging Android Apps: Life is Crime, Clouds & Sheep and Suddenly Popular Zombies
• Zynga’s Mobile Daily Actives Grow by Tenfold in Less Than a Year to 9.9M in Third Quarter
• Zynga Spent Nearly $20M on Acquiring Four Companies in the Third Quarter

Saturday, November 5th: 

• Mobile App Roundup: Funzio, DeNA and Adobe
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: ngmoco :), Check Point Studios, TinyCo and More

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, October 31st:

• Bubble Games Bouncing Around This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Cheech and Chong’s Animated Game Lights Up on Facebook
• More Details on Inside Social Apps 2012 – February 8th and 9th in San Francisco
• Pool on Facebook: Simple But Highly Social

Tuesday, November 1st:

• YetiZen’s Accelerator Program Shows Off Revamped Games, Services
• Game Insight Goes to Google+With Resort World, Bringing Mystery Manor to iPad
• Multi-Channel Ad Marketplace AdKnowledge Acquires Bootstrapped Facebook Ads API Vendor AdParlor
• GREE Says it Will Launch New Global Mobile-Social Gaming Platform Using OpenFeint Next Year

Wednesday, November 2nd:

• Ravenskye City, Bubble Witch Saga on Top in This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU
• Q-Games Brings its Acclaimed PlayStation Tower Defense Game PixelJunk Monsters to Facebook
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Games Cafe, King.com, TinyCo and More
• Bossa Studios Makes its Godzilla Sized Mark on Facebook Games with Monstermind
• RockYou Cuts Half of Staff, Shelves Cloudforest, Spins Out Playdemic, Drives up ARPU on Zoo World 2

Thursday, November 3rd:

• New Hires in Social Gaming: Crowdstar, Playfish and Zynga
• How to Spot a Breakout Facebook Game
• Zynga’s CastleVille Launching This Month

Friday, November 4th:

• Zombie Island, Wasteland Empires Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Zynga’s Revenue Climbs to $306.8M in Third Quarter as Daily Actives Decline
• With Android, iOS, Close to 20 Percent of Zynga’s Daily Actives Are Not on Facebook
• Zynga Spent Nearly $20M on Acquiring Four Companies in the Third Quarter
• Supercell’s Facebook Action RPG Gunshine.net Comes Out (of Beta) Shooting
• OMGPOP Expands Facebook Offerings With HTML5 Based Gem Rush
• Social Gaming News Roundup: Sony, Playdom and DeNA

Saturday, November 5th:

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: TinyCo, King.com, Lolapps and More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, October 31st:

• Birthdays, Page Tabs, Band Apps, Scribd, Cupid and Skype on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• More Details on Inside Social Apps 2012 – February 8th and 9th in San Francisco
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Street King, Realtors, Gray Line, MassMutual and Farmers Insurance
• Facebook Discontinues Official Mp3 Music Player, Pushes Users to Streaming Partners

Tuesday, November 1st:

• Adele, Real Madrid, Puss In Boots, Battlefield, Jesus and Coca-Cola on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
• Multi-Channel Ad Marketplace AdKnowledge Acquires Bootstrapped Facebook Ads API Vendor AdParlor

Wednesday, November 2nd:

• Yahoo, Snaptu, Grooveshark, Onedate, WhoIsNear? and Photos on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• The Facebook Marketing Bible November 2011 Edition Is Now Available
• Hotel Marketing Platform Buuteeq Helps Travel Destinations Build Rich Facebook Presences
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: BLiNQ, Lolapps, TinyCo and More
• How to Use Facebook Open Graph Apps for Marketing Through the Ticker and Timeline

Thursday, November 3rd:

• Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Research, Marketing and More
• Facebook Careers Postings: Legal, Asia, Recruiting, Engineering and More
• Deal United’s Facebook “Credits Rewards” Lets Clients Incentivize Signups and Purchases With Virtual Currency

Friday, November 4th:

• Photos, Halloween, Pixable, Washington Post Social Reader and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
• Instant Message, Music Services Are Now Among the Most Engaging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Roundup: Swedish Data Center, Solar Energy, Politics, Messages, Seattle and Ceglia

Saturday, November 5th: 

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Acquinity Interactive, BLINQ, King.com and More

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at TinyCo, Games Cafe Inc., King.com, Acquinity Interactive, BLiNQ, Lolapps, Natural Motion Games, ngmoco :) and Check Point Studios.

• Product Manager
• C++ Game Engineer
• Data Analyst

• Senior Social Game Designer
• Social Game Designer
• Game Programmer

• Product Performance Manager, Skillgames – King.com
• Senior Systems Developer, Skillgames – King.com
• Front end Developer, Skillgames – King.com

• Campaign Analyst
• Director of Operations – Online Marketing
• Account Executive – Online Marketing
• Marketing Coordinator – Online Marketing
• Sales Director – Online Marketing
• Senior Affiliate Manager – Online Marketing

• Media Manager

• User Acquisition Manager
• Principal Data Analyst
• Producer/Project Manager

• Design Lead / Manager
• Lead Programmer
• Customer Acquisition Manager

• Senior Software Engineer

• Sr. Programmer

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Games Cafe Inc., King.com, TinyCo, Natural Motion Games, ngmoco :), Check Point Studios, BLiNQ, Lolapps and Acquinity Interactive.