Inside Facebook

Zynga’s hit virtual farming game FarmVille reached 50 million monthly active users this past week, and led our AppData application growth leaderboard with 4.21 million new users. The app is now one sixth the size of Facebook itself, going by the platform’s recently-announced 300 million monthly active users.

Other notable apps on this week’s top 20 fastest-growing list include Facebook’s own mobile applications, as well international developers from China and Argentina. In general, the apps that have been doing well in recent months are continuing to lead — social games and game-like apps.

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		FarmVille	50,256,546	+4,208,109	+9.1	Zynga
2.		Birthday Cards	18,931,760	+2,657,781	+16.3	RockYou!
3.		Quizzer	3,257,459	+1,862,533	+133.5	Quizzer
4.		Enemy of the Day	8,005,295	+1,441,057	+22.0	3happybytes
5.		YoVille	17,599,013	+1,307,056	+8.0	Zynga
6.		Friend of the Day	7,602,186	+1,240,195	+19.5	3happybytes
7.		Mafia Wars	25,455,588	+1,216,548	+5.0	Zynga
8.		Mobile	11,988,101	+1,093,508	+10.0	Facebook
9.		Restaurant City	15,347,048	+987,371	+6.9	Playfish
10.		Death´s Time	12,125,609	+973,067	+8.7	3happybytes
11.		My Fishbowl	4,192,713	+890,601	+27.0	TwoFishes Interactive
12.		Animal Paradise	2,769,097	+725,817	+35.5	Rekoo
13.		Causes	30,911,613	+722,829	+2.4	Causes
14.		Pet Society	18,374,195	+704,639	+4.0	Playfish
15.		Give Hearts	7,632,349	+699,691	+10.1	6 waves
16.		What Type of Wife are you or will you be?	1,572,581	+677,614	+75.7	—
17.		Facebook for iPhone	14,632,201	+655,852	+4.7	—
18.		(Lil) Farm Life	3,782,228	+649,829	+20.8	Greenpatch Inc
19.		Your Indian Name!	4,771,891	+639,565	+15.5	AppSphere Inc.
20.		Diva Life	725,314	+631,499	+673.1	Diva Life

Facebook’s mobile web app came in at number eight, having gained 1.10 million users in the past week. While the app has been growing steadily for months, this is a sharp increase. It nearly made our Top 20 list a few weeks ago, when it grew by 262,000. The app has nearly 12 million users. But it’s still smaller than Facebook’s iPhone app, number 17 with 14.6 million monthly actives and 656,000 this past week.

International apps are now cracking the top 20 list as well. This is not surprising. Facebook has said that more than 70 percent of its users are outside of the US. We’ve seen a surge over the course of the year among companies like Rekoo out of China and TwoFishes Interactive from Hong Kong, and recently, 3happybytes out of Argentina.

While its apps are extremely simple — “Death’s Time” at number ten predicts a joke death for you, for example — 3happybytes has three apps in the top ten. Enemy of the Day and Friend of the Day are at 4 and six, respectively having grown 1.44 million and 1.24 million users in the past week, seemingly across Spanish, English and other languages.

TwoFishes’ My Fishbowl virtual acquarium gained 891,000 to reach 4.19 million monthly actives, and number 11 on the leaderboard. Rekoo, meanwhile, is at number 12 with virtual pet game Animal Paradise, and although it is available in multiple languages, it appears to mostly have Chinese-language users. It grew by 726,00 new users to reach 2.77 million monthly actives. Hong Kong-based 6 Waves, meanwhile, has an app at number 15 with Give Hearts.