Now that the dust has settled after Facebook’s adjustment to its method for counting active users, we take a look at the top 25 Facebook games going into December 2011.

Note: Because Facebook now rounds traffic to the thousands, our rankings now reflect ties with the letter “T” in the rank field.

We begin with the top 25 games by daily active users, which is the most effective measurement of a game’s core audience. About half of our games on the list saw losses in DAU over the last month, with the largest loss reflected in The Sims Social. That game appears to have reached its early life traffic apex right at the end of September before going into its mature state where traffic declines and the lifetime value of users rises. Note that Zynga’s Mafia Wars 2 technically suffered the “biggest loss” of DAU between November and December as it doesn’t even rank in the top 25 going into this month; on November 1, it would’ve been in the top 10 in terms of DAU. The biggest gainer was newcomer CastleVille at No.2, Zynga’s latest and so far fastest-growing game ever on Facebook while  older game Top Eleven makes its debut at No.25:

Turning now to monthly active users, which is a means for gauging a game’s overall reach, we see mostly overall growth with just nine apps losing ground compared to their November numbers. The Sims Social again sees the biggest loss on the list while Mafia Wars 2 sees such a huge loss, it falls off the list completely whereas in November it would have been in the top 10. CastleVille again makes a strong showing at No.5 while Car Town returns to our rankings after a brief absence:

Other somewhat new notable games climbing the rankings for the past several months are Bubble Witch Saga, Tetris Battle, Words With Friends, and Ravenskye City. Each of these games either launched in the last four months or has spent those last four months scaling steadily to arrive in the top 25.

As for overall trends that we’ve observed in the last several months in studying our monthly top 25 rankings charts, it’s clear that “top” games now need a minimum of around 1 million DAU to place. As few as eight months ago, games could get close with around 800,000 DAU — but now there are five games in the 900,000 range, three of which didn’t make the top 25. Another trend is the relative stability of arcade and casino games. Titles like Slotomania and Diamond Dash seem like they’ll never leave this list no matter how old they get.

Join us toward the end of this month for a look back at the top Facebook games of 2011 as the calendar year draws to a close.

The Sims Social comes closer to CityVille going into the month of October on our list of top 25 Facebook games by size. Last month, the game debuted at No.3 in daily active users and No.5 by monthly active users.

There are some newcomers to our rankings this month, but only one of them is a newly-launched game. Zynga’s Adventure World went live in early September while Social Point’s Social Empires and DoubleDown Casino have been around for 10 months or more before finally hitting their all-time traffic highs in the last month. In the case of Social Point, it seems as though the game is benefiting from investor funding closed in July. As for not-quite-newcomers, EA PopCap’s Zuma Blitz returns to the rankings after a brief absence.

A notable absence from our list this month is Gaia Online’s Monster Galaxy. After a long period of sustained growth, the game has declined dramatically in the past two months or so, falling more than 83% across both MAU and DAU in that time period.

These figures are based on October 7, 2011 totals logged in AppData.

Since late 2008, we’ve been tracking the top 25 games, or at least game-like apps, each month for the MySpace platform (at least as well as we could, given that MySpace only shares total install numbers). MySpace has never shown the amount of growth that Facebook has, but still offered a good audience for some games. Nevertheless, overall traffic declines on the site, as well as massive layoffs at the company, and plans for a sale have collectively cooled developer interest. And recently, a number of them have shut down titles on MySpace, mainly to focus resources on Facebook, from what we’ve seen.

Thus far, developers Playdom, RockYou, and Zynga have all shut down applications (although there may be more, let us know in the comments). Of the three, Zynga has shut down the least, while RockYou has pulled all of its top titles out completely. As it stands, most of the largest remaining apps consist of lighter games that are generally the simpler style of game from yesteryear, such as text-based role-playing games, and basic sharing/gifting types of apps that allow friends to interact with one another in fun, game-like ways.

Here’s a quick breakdown of top titles that have gone in recent months.

Playdom

Playdom was the second most dominant developer with seven titles within the most recent Top 25 by installs list. Now, however, it is even with BitRhymes, with five apps on the list, having shut down two of its role-playing games, Overdrive and Bloodlines. Both were text-based RPGs.

As it stands, Playdom is still keeping its top Mobsters game, Sorority Life, and WSOP Poker up and running. In addition to these, the merely game-like apps Bumper Stickers and Own Your Friends are still in service as well.

Overdrive — Though the game still appears in the app gallery on MySpace, it was noted to us that the game was, in fact, discontinued. As such, the exact shut down date is unknown, but the racing RPG’s user numbers, as of our last reporting on the 1st of March, tallied 2,709,540 and came in at #17 on our list.

Bloodlines – The vampire RPG, Bloodlines, has also shut down, and likely around the same time as Overdrive. It’s last noted numbers (also from the 1st), were 2,000,332 total users. It was #19 on our Top 25 list.

RockYou

RockYou was the first major developer to drop out of MySpace. As it stands, every one of the top RockYou titles have been removed completely (meaning they no longer even appear in the app gallery). Likely the removal was due to both the decline of the platform and significant layoffs back in October. In total, the four top titles from the developer are now gone.

Truth Box – A game-like application that allowed for more fun social interaction between friends, its last recorded numbers, from December, were at 7,845,445 total users and was #7 in the top 25 MySpace games. We noted its disappearance in January

RockYou Pets — Formerly #10 on our lists, the virtual pet game of RockYou Pets also disappeared at the same time as Truth Box. Its user count, from December, was 6,063,043.

SuperHug! – Another game-like social interaction app, this time at #14, was SuperHug!. Along with the prior two, this app was gone come January, with the prior month’s user numbers equaling 4,454,609.

Speed Racing – A month later, racing RPG, Speed Racing bit the dust. Before its departure it was #19 and hosted 2,595,852 total users. The numbers were reported in January.

Zynga

Surprisingly enough, Zynga has not shut down as many MySpace titles as one might expect, considering past Facebook game shut downs. Thus far, it has only noticeably shut down its racing RPG, Street Racing. Like the Playdom apps, it still appears in the app gallery, despite being discontinued several months ago.

Zynga still hosts seven games within the top 25 MySpace games list including Mafia Wars, YoVille, Zynga Poker, Vampires, Fashion Wars, Special Forces, and Friend Factory.

Street Racing – Shut down at the end of November, the racing role-player actually still saw visitors for some time. Before we stopped tracking it, the game was still #11 on the list (despite having been shut down), with a total user count of 4,634,151 as of January. Note that the game also was shut down on Facebook.

Like last month, 16 of the 25 largest Facebook games by monthly active users have experienced user declines, with seven, including CityVille, steming from social developer Zynga. Many of these games were launched a year ago or earlier, and massive new games are not emerging to take their place, at least in terms of equivalent MAU numbers.

But before we get into the details, the other important thing to note is that while MAU shows total size, the daily active user count is a better measure of the popularity of a game with serious users, and the game’s ability to monetize through virtual goods. CityVille, for example, has been losing MAU but gaining DAU in the past month; Zynga has flat DAU overall versus a month ago, at 52.9 million today. (For details on these stats and much more, check out our AppData service, which tracks the traffic to top Facebook apps and developers.)

MAU numbers still provide valuable information about what new games are gaining significant numbers of new users. Ravenwood Fair, It Girl, and Mall World have done especially well. Moreover, two newcomers join the list from Gaia Online and wooga in the form of Monster Galaxy and Monster World, respectively.

Also, remember that the big trend in 2010 was a wide range of smaller games growing and figuring out how to monetize effectively, as we’ve covered before.

With all that, here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for March 2011:

• Zynga’s CityVille sees a significant drop this month, losing over 3.6 million monthly active users (MAU). Even with the decline, the game still boasts nearly 95 million MAU in total.
• Texas Hold’Em Poker (Zynga Poker) marks one of only two Zynga apps to gain numbers this month with a growth of 544,040 MAU.
• Millionaire City from Digital Chocolate surpasses Treasure Isle for the #7 spot, but still loses over 475,000 MAU.
• As noted prior, Ravenwood Fair, from LOLapps continues its impressive climb up the charts with the highest gain this month. Growing by approximately 3.7 million MAU to come in at #11.
• Right behind Ravenwood comes CrowdStar’s It Girl which grows by approximately 1.2 million MAU.
• The #17 spot hosts our first newcomer to the list this week with Monster Galaxy from Gaia Online. The game grows by just shy of 1.5 million MAU for a total of 6,864,568.
• Mall World is the second “girls-only” title on the list the month. From developer 50 Cubes, the game earns a total of 6.6 million MAU.
• Zynga sees its second gain this month with YoVille which earns 85,374 MAU.
• Coming in at #24 is the next newcomer to the top 25, Monster World from wooga. Gaining 456,0623 MAU, the title totals out at just shy of 6.1 million.

After the loss of top executives and the laying off of nearly half its workforce, News Corp.-owned MySpace is looking for a new home. Though official talks have not yet taken place — these are stated to be scheduled for the second week of March — News Corp. has already noted at least 20 parties interested in the social network. As far as how this will affect the various social games on the platform is anyone’s guess, but in the interim, they titles of the top 25 have at least stabilized since last month.

The developer platform, meanwhile, has not seen much changes — MySpace reports total users so declines would not show up here.

Two months ago, we noted the removal of many RockYou titles, with last month hosting the removal of its last remaining app, Speed Racing. On that same note, Zynga’s Street Racing was also noted as having been shut down (service had closed late last year, even though the game could still be found in the MySpace app gallery). That in mind, the top 25 for March contains, for the first time in a few months, all the same apps it did before.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for March, 2011:

• Playdom sees a gain of 22,044  new installs for Mobsters this month. Staying at #1, it is, as one would expect, followed by Mafia Wars with a gain of 3,354. Each titles’ total users tallies in at around 15.1 million and 13.4 million users respectively.
• Tag Me, from BitRhymes, grows slightly with approximately 11,000 new installations. The game earns about 8.5 million users in total.
• Slide keeps its presence known on MySpace with SuperPoke Pets at #8. While the company’s Facebook presence has faltered over the years, this title still earns over 7.1 million total users on MySpace.
• Oxylabs grows further with What is your Street Reputation, pulling in 19,711 new installations this month.
• WSOP Poker, from Playdom comes in at #14 with a small gain of just over 4,000 installs. Its total user base tallies in just shy of 3.5 million.
• Playfish sneaks in its title Pet Society into the top 25 at #23. The long running game is significantly smaller than its Facebook counterpart, hosting around 1.5 million total users.
• Ending the list at #25 is Zynga with the older app, Friend Factory. The title’s user count totals 1,457,789.

Though last month displayed growth for the top Facebook applications, February appears to be singing a different tune. This time around, 16 of the top 25 Facebook games have experienced loses. Of those, however, half still managed to keep the monthly active user decline under 1 million players.

Despite the negatives, a number of newer games have shown significant growth. As one might expect, CityVille continues its tremendous incline (at least for the month, as it’s fallen in recent weeks) but the top 25 also shows a bit of staying power with its “girls-only” titles. Both It Girl and Mall World continue on their upward trends for the second month in a row, with the former gaining over 1.2 million users. This month also has two newcomers and a returning app to the list in the form of Boyaa’s 德州撲克(中文版) or Texas Hold’em (Chinese Version), LOLapps’ Ravenwood Fair, and wooga’s Bubble Island.

It’s also important to note that the trends for the largest apps are not the same as the trends for smaller apps. In a detailed article last week, we examined data showing that dozens of smaller social games have had a great 2010.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for February 2011:

• As noted, Zynga remains on top with the astounding growth of CityVille, having gained over 18.4 million MAU for a total of over 98 million.
• Other Zynga games, however, drop dramatically, with most loosing well over one million MAU. The only two to grow is the classic Texas HoldEm Poker (#3), who gains 1.9 million users, and YoVille (#21), who gains a bit over 200,000.
• Digital Chocolate’s popular Millionaire City has also slowed in its growth, having lost approximately 400,000 MAU.
• It Girl, from CrowdStar, moves up significantly this month, changing from #18 to #13. It’s MAU totals out at just shy of 8.1 million.
• Car Town also grows, moving up from #17 to #14 as the Cie Games title gains around 741,000 new users.
• A newcomer to the list, Chinese app 德州撲克(中文版) from Boyaa makes its appearance at #15 with 7,756,670 MAU.
• LOLapps makes its first appearance on the top 25 this month with their popular title Ravenwood Fair. Having gained nearly 2.3 million MAU, the title caps out at just over 7.2 million.
• Playdom’s City of Wonder sees a significant drop (#13 to #23) as the city-builder declines by nearly 2.3 million MAU.
• Making a reappearance on the list at #25 is wooga with its simple puzzle app, Bubble Island. The game racks in an MAU count of approximately 5.9 million.

It’s been a rough going for MySpace lately. In past months, the platform has suffered the loss of top executives and more recently, laid off 47% of their workforce or roughly 500 employees, and parent company News Corp. has been assessing possibilities that include both sales and mergers.

However, the numbers for top MySpace games continue on their stable trend… in a manner of speaking. Last month, many of the RockYou titles on the social network were no longer found, and this time, the last remaining title from the company, Speed Racing, is now apparently gone. Additionally, Zynga’s role-playing counterpart, Street Racing, while still appearing in the app gallery appears to have also been shut down. These developers appear to be scaling back their investments in the platform.

With the removal of the two noted games, two new applications have made their way into the top 25 in the forms of Special Forces and Friend Factory; both from Zynga.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for February, 2011:

• Thought the future of the platform if uncertain, the stability of Playdom’s Mobsters and Zynga’s Mafia Wars remains. The total users for each title, this months, comes to just over 15 million and 13.4 million respectively.
• The collection of more toy-like apps also continues to do well on MySpace. The titles of Bumper Stickers, Own Your Friends, and BitRhymes’ Tag Me all see moderate growth with their totals coming to approximately 13 million, 10.3 million, and 8.5 million.
• The BitRhymes virtual drinking game Cheers!! remains at #9, gaining just over 5,000 new users.
• Zynga RPG Vampires stands alone this month at #10 with 5.3 million total users. Typically, the game is followed by the now shut down Street Racing.
• With the loss of Street Racing, Sorority Life moves up to #12. The women-targeted RPG totals out at over 3.7 million users this month.
• Playfish title Pet Society grows slightly this month at #23 having gained 7,601 new users for a total of 1,492,269.
• Zynga adds one returning title and one newcomer to the top 25 with Special Forces and Friend Factory. The apps earn a total of 1,482,442 and 1,457,821 users respectively.

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

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

• Innovative Games Join Holiday Apps on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Announcing Inside Mobile Apps: Tracking the Convergence of Mobile Apps and Social Platforms
• What Goldman Sachs’ Reported $450 Million Investment in Facebook May Mean
• Top 25 Facebook Games for January 2011
• Facebook and the Parallel Surge in (Early-and Late-Stage) Valuations
• With a Focus on Monetizing Mobile Apps, Tapjoy Leaves Its Scamville Past Behind
• November 2010 Facebook Traffic: Usual Growth Worldwide, Slower in US, Measurement Firms Show

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

• Facebook Promotes Friend Lists with Notification When Added to Featured People
• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Harry Potter, Manchester United, Rihanna, Gaga and Bieber
• Facebook May Move Headquarters from Palo Alto to Empty Sun Campus in Menlo Park
• The Best Facebook Page Strategies and the Pages That Use Them

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

• Likes, Dating and Games Appear on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Offerpop’s Tab Apps Let Pages Run Commenting Contests that Reach the Feed
• The Facebook Marketing Bible January 2011 Edition Is Now Available
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Ubisoft, PlaySpan, Nanigans, & More
• Zibaba To Launch Affiliate Marketing Ecommerce Storefront for Facebook Pages
• RootMusic Nets $2.3 Million in Funding to Hire Engineers for Facebook App BandPage

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

• Facebook Career Posts: Mobile Operators, Lega, Data Centers, and More
• Countdown to Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco
• State, Local Government Agencies Reach Agreement with Facebook on Legal Concerns
• Vevo’s Lift Facebook App Awards Prizes to the Users Who Share Music Videos the Most

Friday, January 7th, 2011

• New Year’s Greetings Fill This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Sharethrough Helps Advertisers Place Their Videos Deep Within Social Games
• The Best Facebook-Integrated Devices from CES 2011
• Facebook Moves Friend Requests Link to the Home Page’s Left Sidebar
• Platform Update: Out with the Old Insights, Further API Migration Deadline Extensions
• Facebook Roundup: Loading Time HuffPo, Congress, Facebook Movie, Hyundai and More
• Thanks to Our Sponsors

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: A Bit Lucky, Arkadium, Menue, & More

Three RockYou titles have suddenly disappeared from the MySpace app gallery, including the previous #7, #10, and #14 apps: Truth Box, RockYou Pets, and SuperHug!. The RockYou website also no longer promotes its MySpace games. Back in October, the company laid off part of its workforce; the MySpace disappearance could be another possible cut-back.

With RockYou gone, three applications reappear on the top 25: Fashion Wars (Zynga), What My Friends Think About Me (Grong!), and Pet Society (Playfish). This is the biggest change over last month, although several apps grew significantly:

• Crime continues to pay with Playdom’s Mobsters gaining close to 38,000 new installations, with Zynga’s Mafia Wars trailing at #2 with a gain of 8,518.
• BitRhymes holds steady on MySpace with its selection of five applications, including Tag Me at #5. The app boasts over 8.4 million users in total. BitRhymes’ lowest app comes in at #17 with Whats my Impression on friends, with around 2.9 million users.
• SuperPoke Pets, from Slide, moves up to #8 with the loss of RockYou’s Truth Box. The game gains over 9,000 new installations for a total user count of approximately 7.1 million.
• The middle ranks of the top 25 still find themselves filled with role-playing titles from Zynga and Playdom. At #10 and #11 are Vampires (5.3 million users) and Street Racing (4.6 million users), and at #13 comes Sorority Life (3.7 million users).
• Coming in at #19 is the last standing RockYou game, Speed Racing. Earning 2,632 new installations this month, it totals out at just under 2.6 million users.
• Fashion Wars reappears at #23 with a total of 1.9 million users with What My Friends Think About Me, from Grong!, trailing with 1.7 million.
• Wrapping up the list is the long running Playfish title, Pet Society, who currently plays host to approximately 1.5 million users.

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

Monday, November 29th, 2010

• Phrases Reboots With a New Version on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• MySpace’s New Facebook Connection Starts to Grow
• Facebook Temporarily Denies Access to Users with Invalid Names
• Facebook Removes Bookmark for Old Groups, Adds Recently Updated Section for New Groups
• Facebook Opens Page Promotions to Small Businesses, Drops Pre-Approval And Minimum Spend Requirements

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Rihanna, Star Trek, Google, Zynga, Red Bull and More
• Now Available: The Facebook Marketing Bible December 2010 Edition
• Compose Facebook Updates to Promote WordPress Blog Posts with Involver’s Audience Management Platform
• Ads API Profile: Brighter Option’s Social Ads Manager for Smaller Budgets
• American Dreams Combines Social Gaming, Education and International Relations

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

• Another Early Facebook Employee Slips Out: Engineering Leader Aditya Agarwal
• Video and Mobile Apps Appear on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Top 25 Facebook Games for December 2010
• Facebook Confirms Tab Application User Count Bug, Plans Fix Today
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Kabam, Storm8, iRok2, & More
• Invite Email Contacts to Like your Facebook Page with “Tell your Fans”

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

• Interview with Payvment: Funding, Facebook Credits, and a Business Model Built Around Discovery
• New Generation of Practical Apps Launch on Facebook’s Platform
• Facebook Career Postings: Games Partnerships, Questions, Immigration, Platform Ops and More
• LivingSocial Confirms Big New Round from Amazon, Plans More Expansion
• Facebook Tests Engagement Ads for Charities That Repurpose User Actions and Content
• More Info on Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

• Games Fill Up This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• The Year in Facebook-Powered Shopping
• Facebook for Android v1.4 Mobile App Includes Places and Groups, but Still Lags Behind iPhone
• Facebook Developer Update: Facepile Plugin and Graph API Features
• Facebook Roundup: Office Expansion, Social Searches, Black Friday, Gowalla, Places, Zuckerberg and Gawker
• Thanks to Our Sponsors