Zynga’s CityVille has climb up to the number one spot on app leaderboard so fast, I am sure, that even Zynga must have been surprised.
CityVille has now edged pass Zynga’s own number one game Farmville in about 3 weeks after its launched.
According to data from AppData, FarmVille has 56.6 million active users with 16.3 million daily active users, while CityVille has 61 million monthly active users with 16.7 million daily active users.
Beside Cityville and FarmVille, zynga also holds two more spots in the top five with FrontierVille and Texas HoldEm Poker. Mafia Wars has been losing active players over the last few months but still holds a place in the top 10.
CityVille’s future success was well expected, but it’s is very impressive to see how it amassed all those players in just a matter of few weeks.
It is true all social games eventually settle and start seeing drop-offs. FarmVille’s all time high was more than 83 million monthly active users. How soon will CityVille top that? And how long will CityVille rule? Those are yet to be seen.
In the meantime, it’s just happy times for Zynga.
FarmVille, the most popular social game on Facebook has been finally dethroned by another Facebook app that has nothing to do with anything called games.
Phrases is an app that allows users to post a variety of content to their newsfeed including quotes, images, and quizzes. Takeoff Monkey takes the credit as the developer of the app.
Phrases was able to edge pass FarmVille barely, but it is surely a great achievement to take down FarmVille that ruled the chart for 15 months. According to appdata, Phrases has around 54.4 million monthly average users, while FarmVille stood with around 53.9 million.
Phrases is certainly making news but it is believed that it doesn’t have what it takes to continue its run. Takeoff Monkey is said to have disabled the app for U.S. users recently without any explaination according to Inside Facebook.
According to Gamasutra, FarmVille is still the top dog with around 16 million daily active users, and Windows Live Messenger with 9.7 million daily users is the closest competitor.
Zynga's CityVille
Leading developer of Facebook games Zynga is on the verge of churning out yet another game.
The game to be released was first hit the news few months back. The title of the new game is CityVille.
According to CityVille’s genereal manager, Sean Kelley, “CityVille is where Monopoly meets Main Street.”
In CityVille, players will take the role of a city manager and build infrastructure, start business, take care of transport, import and exports, and trade with other players.
Zynga says CityVille is its most social game. The beta version of the game will be available in five languages – English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian in the coming weeks.
Zynga has more than 225 million monthly users and holds many of the top spots in terms of monthly active users starting with FarmVille. Some other popular Zynga’s game holding a spot on the top 25 games in the past many months are Texas HoldEm Poker, FrontierVille and Mafia Wars.
The last game Zynga released was FrontierVile where players take care of their homestead, now has an average of 28 million monthly users. It was launched in June.
How CityVille will fare is yet to be seen, but given Zynga’s current run, let’s hope this game will also be as appealing as Zynga’s other titles.
Facebook’s leading game developer Zynga has be sue for sharing personal information of Facebook users.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in a Federal Court on San Francisco by Nancy Graf of St. Paul, Minnesota. The suit seeks monetary relief for those Facebook users whose data was shared. It also seeks injunctive relief for prevention of “continued privacy abuses.”
Zynga has been accused of violating Facebook policy as well as numerous Federal and state laws.
The lawsuit is said to be linked to the report first published in the Wall Street Journal, where the popular game developer along with other app developers was accused of sharing Facebook users IDs with ad companies. This privacy breach has seen LOLApps games being shut down by Facebook for a couple of days.
Zynga plans to contest the suit stating, “We believe that the complaint is without merit and we intend to defend against it vigorously.”
The recent privacy breach reported by WSJ also got attention of Congress that eventually lead them to ask Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about what the company knew about the privacy breach and steps the company is taking to remedy the situation.
The scale of the privacy breach is being debated, with many believing the problem has been over hyped.
Many of you might have read about it, but I thought this news also deserve to be shared 
John Sweeney and Joanne Doane, found love in the most unexpected place – Zynga’s Mafia Wars.
Sweeney and Doane, the godfather and godmother of the Mafia Wars True Alliance clan, reportedly met playing the game in March 2009 and bonded over the clan warfare and discussing strategy for hours on the phone.
They tied the knot on September 17 at Central Station in Treasure Isle, Florida. Apart from meeting on Zynga’s game, a mob-themed wedding cake, the couple is also said to be going on their honeymoon for free – courtesy of Zynga .
Click here for more on the story and interview with the couple.
FarmVille is undoubtly the most played game on Facebook. So are the other games of Zynga such as Mafia War, FrontierVille and Texas Hold Em Poker.These games are well accepted and loved by people around the world.
But how well do you know the person behind the games? Here are some quotes made by former Zynga’s employees about the company, the CEO Mark Pincus to be more specific, as SF Weekly article reports:
“I don’t fucking want innovation,” the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. “You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”
One freelance contractor said he was offered work from Zynga with explicit instructions: “Copy that game.”
The former senior employee who was present for Pincus’ “No innovation” diatribe described Zynga’s business model this way: “Steal somebody else’s game, throw millions of dollars at it, and then, if it doesn’t have it already, add virtual coins.”
A former employee. “I would venture to say it is one of the most evil places I’ve run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I’ve tried my best to make sure that friends don’t let friends work at Zynga.”
In August, Digital Chocolate filed a lawsuit against Zynga over the trademark to the “Mafia Wars” game. Zynga’s ad agency also got into trouble recently for vandalizing streets in San Francisco, but sticking fake dollar bills.
All these quotes makes Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus infamous quote rings true, “I have done every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues.”
But, as the SF Weekly article points out, “Many successful companies have their original sins — corners cut, bridges burned, allies trampled.” We cannot hate Zynga or its games just for being so evil . Our own Facebook has it’s own stories.
Facebook and leading Facebook game developer Zynga has announce the exclusive use of Facebook credits on all Zynga’s games.
Zynga, which offers games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Texas Hold Em Poker, and FrontierVille has agreed to use Facebook Credits exclusively in its games, and is preparing for the switch.
Though Zynga game credits page still shows multiple options for purchasing credits, purchase made through any of these options will actually purchase Facebook credits that automatically transforms into the game’s premium cash. As Facebook announced earlier, it will be pocketing 30% of the profits made through the transactions involving Facebook Credits.
This move comes almost four months after the companies signed a five-year partnership for exclusive use of Facebook Credits in their titles. CrowStar International Ltd. and Disney owned Playdom Inc are some other social game developer who signed similar deal with Facebook earlier this year.
Facebook’s drive for making Facebook Credits as the virtual currency on Facebook seems to be gaining momentum and it wouldn’t be long before Facebook Credits becomes the de facto payment method on Facebook.
(Source: East Village Feed)
Facebook leading game developer, Zynga’s advertising firm has been hit with cleaning bills and fines.
Zynga’s marketing firm, Davis Advertising, is accused of sticking fake $25,000 bills on the sidewalks in San Francisco advertising Zynga’s latest game, “Mafia Wars: Las Vegas.”
Zynga even robbed in rapper Snoop Dogg to blow up an armored truck in the middle of Nevada desert last week in a related stunt for marketing.
Though the messy marketing worked with Zynga’s Mafia wars: Las Vegas tapping more than 3 million users, Zynga might have taken a wrong step resorting to real-life vandalism just to promote a game.
San Francisco isn’t so happy about the promotion stunt. So are the local bloggers. A blog on East Village Feed reads, “Please Clean Up ‘Mafia’ Dollars.“
According to Games.com, “CityVille” surfaced on Zynga’s community forum and supported it with a screenshot.
(Source: Games.com)
On top of that, Zynga reportedly surveyed players of its other games in order to guage interest in a city-building game.
So, will the next game from Zynga be the reported city-building game called Cityville? That we have to wait and watch.
But if Zynga launch CityVille, it will have to compete with Social City, which has over 12 million monthly users. Not only that, Social City has one of the most refreshing graphics among the city-building games on Facebook.
It will be interesting to see new and addictive elements (if any) added to city-building games, that will pull the city-building game lovers away from the ones already launched.
CityVille have a fair chance of topping the city-building games soon given the amount of awareness Zynga can create through its already-established games. Also, in games like Mafia Wars, players tend to have more than 500 game friends in order to increase their attack and defense, which adds to Zynga’s advantage.
Now, as we know, maker of musical Facebook games Conduit Labs is acquired by Zynga, we cannot count out musical social games as the next-in-line to be offered by Zynga and not the rumored CityVille.
Zynga, the leading social games developer on Facebook, has announced it has acquired Japanese start-up Unoh. Amount of the deal was not disclosed, but reportedly amounts to “several billion Yen.”
Recently, Japanese technology giant SoftBank funded Zynga with $150 million to build a joint venture for developing and distributing social games across Japan.
With the acquisition, Unoh will provide Zynga with a base for the Asian social games market.
Machitsuku! (“Build a City in Japanese) is the current leading title with 3 million users from Unoh on Mixi, Japan’s largest social network. Other popular titles from Unoh include Band Yarouyo! and Kaizoku Chronicle.
Zynga is the biggest player in social games market with more than 230 million monthly active users. Zynga is currently very dependent on Facebook for its revenue. Tapping into different market and diversifying its revenue source and stronghold will definitely help Zynga a lot in fulfilling its plan to go public.
