Inside Facebook

There are a few diamonds in the rough mix of simple applications on this week’s list of the top 20 up and coming apps. We put this list together by looking at the applications with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users in AppData, sorted by which applications gained the most users in the past week. As this week shows, looking at this segment of apps can show great apps before they become hits.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	What kind of mask do you wear?	235,158	+207,243	+88.13
2.	JibJab	896,201	+190,506	+21.26
3.	what are you born to do?	913,576	+189,108	+20.70
4.	商業大亨Web	243,784	+184,795	+75.80
5.	Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With?	707,949	+153,073	+21.62
6.	iTop Hits Photo	999,975	+143,170	+14.32
7.	Icy Tower	735,383	+135,090	+18.37
8.	Acımasız Gerçekler	339,686	+117,885	+34.70
9.	Do you think…?	208,255	+98,426	+47.26
10.	MixPod Playlist	621,098	+92,855	+14.95
11.	Huggles	155,295	+92,448	+59.53
12.	Tarjetitas	958,169	+85,017	+8.87
13.	Goobox – Free Games	526,077	+84,995	+16.16
14.	Snowball Fight!	245,950	+80,096	+32.57
15.	Happy Halloween	122,360	+79,734	+65.16
16.	Halloween Costume	293,201	+75,416	+25.72
17.	Petits quiz entre amis	643,118	+72,898	+11.34
18.	Band of Heroes	107,565	+72,519	+67.42
19.	Fun Cards – Thanksgiving & More!	497,893	+71,508	+14.36
20.	A Special Bouquet Greeting!	599,752	+66,856	+11.1

Not speaking of great apps, though, at the top of the list is a quiz app called What kind of mask do you wear? We’re not going to cover it too closely, other than to note that it is made by Quiz Monster, and its interface misleads users into clicking on an IQ Quiz ad, as you can see from the screenshot below. The app has managed to grow quickly, gaining 207,000 to reach 235,000 monthly active users this week.

Not every quiz app misleads users like this, of course. Some of the others near the top of the list, like what are you born to do? and Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With? are not designed to deceive users like this, even though the quizzes are basic templates. Judging by my number of Facebook friends who have played both of the latter apps, many people enjoy them.

Now, for the diamonds on the list. At the top is animated e-card creator JibJab, sort of. The app lets you create and share these cards with your Facebook friends — although the company has apparently taken the app offline, because when you try to add the app you’re taken to a landing page telling you to visit JibJab’s main site. JibJab has been big on using Facebook Connect, and apparently it decided its home site was a better venue for its business. We’re not sure how the app is continuing to post growth: It gained 190,000 new users to reach 896,000 monthly actives.

Further down the list, a few other apps deserve a mention. Icy Tower, an Ice Climbers-style game we covered recently over on Inside Social Games, grew by 135,000 new users to total 735,000. Another app, called MixPod Playlist, gained 93,000 to reach 621,000 monthly actives; the app is sort of similar to iLike, in that it lets you create playlists of songs using content like music videos from YouTube. Another game we recently reviewed on Inside Social Games, called Goobox – Free Games, is also seeing a solid surge. It grew by 85,000 to end the week at 526,000. The game is actually a collection of mini-games, with each one having a goo theme.

Also notable is the diversity of this list. As we’ve seen in past up-and-coming lists, this one includes apps in Turkish, Chinese, Spanish and French.