Playdom Climbs the Charts, Advertising Evolves in Social Gaming
Disney’s Playdom benefited from some hefty gains in last week’s social game rankings, according to AppData.
Pirates Ahoy, owned by Electronic Arts, was the top gainer last week, adding 3.1 million users, reflecting growth of 84 percent and bringing its total to 6.7 million.
Playdom-owned City of Wonder added 2.5 million users, reflecting growth of 4,279 percent, while Market Street, another Playdom game, gained 1.2 million users, reflecting growth of 15 percent.
Car Town (+867,785 users), Nightclub City (+746,208 users), Millionaire City (+712,461 users), Zapapa Games (+640,771 users), Tattoo City (+623,751 users), Armies (+445,828 users) and Lounge Bar (+431,956 uses) also saw big gains.
FarmVille still holds the title of the most popular app with 61.8 million users, followed by Texas HoldEm Poker with 32.5 million users, FrontierVille with 30.3 million users, Phrases with 29.3 million users and Mafia Wars Game with 25.1 million users.
Zynga remains the top app developer with 227.6 million users, followed by Electronic Arts with 55.2 million users, Playdom with 43.6 million users, CrowdStar with 43.6 million users and RockYou! with 32.3 million users.
Last week, Status Shuffle was the biggest loser in the Facebook app world, shedding 8.4 million users. It was followed by Facebook for Android with a loss of 7.6 million users, Quiz Planet with 7.2 million lost users, Twitter with 7.1 million lost users and Cafe World with 6.l million lost users.
The social gaming realm continues to shift with Google continuing its binge on social gaming companies. The latest acquisition is SocialDeck, a mobile game developer, which follows up its bigger grab of Slide.
With the impending full unleashing of Facebook Credits, along with Google’s recent purchase of virtual payments provider Jambool, it’s clear that the social gaming battle, no matter how much Google shrugs it off, will have many fronts.
SupersonicAds, a European company that creates in-game advertising, appears set to have a say in the matter, too, flush with $2 million in fresh funding from an investor group led by former Skype CEO Michael van Swaaij. The company enables social gamers to earn virtual currency required for games by watching video ads or responding to targeted offers.
Maybe it’s reading too much into things, but it looks like the social networking realm is on the cusp of a whole new chapter – one that might be a lot more lucrative and driven by actual dollars being spent.
Sources:</strong
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15902352
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/08/30/google-buys-mobile-social-game-developer-socialdeck/
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/08/09/supersonicads-2-million-fundin/
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/08/09/report-google-buying-jambool-for-around-75-million/
