Facebook Game Apps Gone Domestic
Currently on the 3rd and 4th floor of the McCann Erickson Building, where Adsmarket headquarters are located, you hear the following, "You guys go on ahead, I have to plow my field/ harvest my beets/ check on my cows"…
It’s not the latest trend in going back to a more sustainable living, and nobody has moved from their desks. It’s the Farmville craze, a Facebook App where you cultivate your crop and tend to your animals. You make money by selling your crops and other assets. The folks over at Farmville’s developer, Zynga, claim it to be the largest and fastest-growing social game in history, with over 11 million users since its launch in June 2009.
Two days ago, Inside Facebook’s article, The Top 20 Up and Coming Facebook Apps: Playfish’s Quiztastic Surges, And More., popped into my inbox. They get their information from their own AppData site, which offers daily statistics on the top Facebook Apps and Developers. According to this brief article, the top game, "What will happen tomorrow with you?", gained 813,000 users in the last week. But IF didn’t seem to put much faith in the app, claiming that the second and third runners-up, Animal Hunter, and Playfish’s Quiztastic, showed more promise in the long term.
Noting the power of Facebook users outside the US, IF had this to say about international game apps:
"And, as usual, we’re continuing to see strong performances among international app developers. Argentinian developer 3happybytes has a couple apps on the list, there’s a new Indian movie-fan app called Chakpak movies, and a poker game from Hong Kong developer 6 Waves. "
Here at Adsmarket, we’ve known for a long time that international casual gaming is one of the biggest growth verticals in the online advertising industry. The numbers speak for themselves, with India’s Chakpak at #4 on the list. This is the open call for international games developers and publishers to get busy, and of course, to take advantage of what we can offer.
I’ll leave you with the Farmville Theme Song