Inside Facebook

Heading into September 2011, we have a slew of new games joining the ranks of the top 25 Facebook games by traffic as tracked by AppData — and shockingly, not all of them are from Zynga.

We begin with the top 25 Facebook games by daily active users. This figure is useful in determining the actual number of people faithfully playing a game each day, as opposed to those who log into a game once and then never return after their first experience. Keep in mind that DAU is vulnerable to rapid fluctuations due to external factors like ad spend, game outages, or cross-promotions with other games and media.

Right away, we’re introduced to the big name newcomers on the platform launched in the last 30 days: EA Playfish’s The Sims Social, Zynga’s Pioneer TrailFrontierVille expansion, Zynga’s Words With Friends, and Ubisoft’s The Smurfs & Co. Each of these games got head starts on traffic that pushed them toward the top of our rankings in different ways.

The Sims Social enjoys brand recognition from millions of PC fans that have been playing Sims games for over a decade, and also had an extensive pre-launch marketing campaign driven through its Facebook page. Zynga’s Pioneer Trail and Words With Friends also had recognition, but in both cases, the games pulled from an existing user base with FrontierVille players being directed to migrate to the new app and Words With Friends players on iOS and Android already using Facebook Connect logins to access the Facebook version of the app. Ubisoft’s The Smurfs & Co. also gets some brand recognition from the beloved 1980s cartoon, but it had additional affiliations with The Smurfs live action summer film.

Now we turn our attention to the top 25 Facebook games by monthly active users. This figure is useful in determining a game’s overall reach, but can sometimes be skewed by the game’s natural lifecycle. At this point in the Facebook platform’s development, it seems like most games have the highest MAU in the first three to four months on the market.

*Zoo World 2 appears as Zoo World in our AppData traffic tracking service because the sequel and the original are run through the same app ID.

Again, the newcomers make the biggest splash here, although the not-quite-as-new Zoo World 2 is still working its way up the list. Depending on how Zynga’s experiment in Pioneer Trail with driving users from the original game to a new app ID goes, other developers may consider creative alternatives to the “sequel not selling problem” other social games have struggled with in the past.

These figures are based on September 1, 2011 totals logged in AppData.

Facebook posted updates to its developer blog today detailing changes to the Canvas Page, Graph APIs and bookmarking, and games stores in the news feed. The changes are designed to improve game discovery, retention, and user experience. features that better surface games stories.

Home Page Changes

As promised, Facebook is also improving its automated systems behind surfacing games stories and making it easier to locate games in a centralized location. The homepage bookmarks panel has been updated so that the number and order of bookmarks in the groups and apps section changes based on a user’s habits, presumably so users who actively play more games will see more bookmarks. Users can also manually add bookmarks to a “Favorites” section, which appears at the top of all bookmarks if they want to keep a game handy despite engagement with other games.

Facebook is also changing how game stories appear in the news feed. This could improve discovery for all Facebook users after nearly a year of non-gamers only seeing the occasional story about a friend installing a new game. “We’ve begun rolling out a new ranking system that better surfaces app stories to the people who will most likely to engage with it, including those who don’t already use the app.

Games that publish stories that receive high volumes of Likes and comments will be more likely to have their stories appear in the news feed, while those whose stories are often hidden from the feed or marked as spam will be less likely to appear. Depending on how the system is tuned, it could reduce the reliance of developers on paid marketing channels.

Canvas Page Changes

As you can see from the screenshot below, game discovery is now available through Bookmarks that appear at the top of the right-hand corner of Facebook while users are playing games. The Bookmarks with red numbers indicate apps without outstanding requests, prompting the user to click on the Bookmark for quicker re-engagement with games requests.

> Continue reading about the changes to the Canvas page, including information on the new dedicated games ticker on Inside Social Games.

Kicking off the month of August on Facebook are many of the games we’re very used to seeing in the top 10, and most of which belong to Zynga: CityVille, FarmVille, and newcomer Empires & Allies. A couple of up-and-coming games catch our eye, however, toward the lower end of our top 25 Facebook games by daily active and monthly active users. Gardens of Time, meanwhile, maintains steady growth even as Playdom moves on to launching newer titles.

We begin with daily active users, which is a better measure of overall audience engagement. Fourteen games in our list experienced losses in DAU, the largest of which occurring Zynga’s CityVille and FarmVille. Empires & Allies manages a small gain, meanwhile, which makes us wonder about the traffic targets Facebook and Zynga agreed upon in exchange for title exclusivity on the social network as the game’s MAU has remained mostly flat since July 17.

As for games new or at least renewed on this list, we see arcade classic newcomer Tetris Battle moving up half a dozen spots to land at No.19. Playtika’s slot machine sim, Slotomania, lands at No.22, suggesting that despite some reported glitches and gripes among users, the developer is putting funds from itspartial acquisition by Caesars Entertainment to good use. Meanwhile, down at No.25, Zoo World 2 makes its first appearance after launching in mid-June. The game is currently being fitted with developer RockYou’s new ad platform.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

Facebook announced this morning that developers signing up for Facebook Credits now have PayPal as a payout option, increasing the flexibility developers have for monetzing apps through Facebook Credits.

This is of particular importance to developers in countries where PayPal is really the only trusted payout option for developers. Payout is the means by which a developer converts in-app currency exchanges to real money that the developer can then deposit into its bank accounts. Facebook says that the PayPal option now doubles the number of countries where developers can begin integrating Facebook Credits to 22 countries total, including Turkey, India and Japan.

Facebook Credits has been a slow road for certain social game developers in the last nine months between apparent reluctance and technical issues. The mandatory integration deadline for Facebook Credits within social games is July 1. It is not clear if Facebook will extend the deadline for remaining countries that are experiencing difficulties with integration tied to payout complications. PayPal currently serves over 190 countries.

Going into May 2011, many of the games from April’s top 25 Facebook games stay with us while some foreign language games vanish. Add to that a few notable newcomers, and you’ve got our top 25 Facebook games for May 2011.

First up, we sort the top 25 by daily active users. This gives us an idea of which games people tend to visit habitually. Be sure to compare this list to the top 25 monthly active users list for an idea of which games have a higher retention rate (or “sticky factor”) with players. Remember that DAU is vulnerable to sharp fluctuations as a result of ad campaigns, technical difficulties, and holiday lulls when people aren’t visiting Facebook when they usually would.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

April kicks off with 14 games shrinking in terms of monthly active users and 15 with fewer daily active users than they enjoyed a month ago. Between the two charts, generated using AppData‘s Top Applications Leaderboard, we see that Mafia Wars sits higher in MAU versus DAU as the result of a late month cross-promotion campaign in CityVille. On the day the campaign launched, Mafia Wars hit a high of nearly 5.6 million DAU compared to its April 1 showing of 2.3 million DAU.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.