2009′s Top 25 Facebook Applications

Posted by Anto on Dec 19, 2009 in Games, Internet | 2 comments

After reading this article on Inside Social Games, I saw the top Facebook applications of 2009, according to AppData. To no one’s surprise, Farmville and Café World are the most popular applications, with over 73 million users for Farmville, and almost 32 million users for Café World.

But what is Zynga’s secret in making those games so interesting (I’m trying to avoid the word addictive!!). Mark Pincus is the founder of Zynga which started in 2007. By 2008, he had 45 staff members working with him. Now, he’s got 600 employees, including a behavioural psychologist on his team. The key to his “golden mechanics”, so called, is constantly evolving the game(s) in response to users’ preferences… akin to weekly TV programming.

It would be interesting to know how these applications will do in 2010. I am certainly anxious to play new games that will arise from Zynga!

	Application	Number of Users
1.	FarmVille	73,035,058
2.	Café World	31,992,352
3.	Birthday Cards	28,127,948
4.	Happy Aquarium	27,495,562
5.	Causes	26,634,744
6.	FishVille	25,991,194
7.	Mafia Wars	25,938,951
8.	Social Interview	25,910,406
9.	Pet Society	21,261,621
10.	Texas HoldEm Poker	20,844,469
11.	Facebook for iPhone	19,828,420
12.	FamilyLink.com	18,493,866
13.	Farm Town	18,209,260
14.	YoVille	18,193,510
15.	Friends Exposed	16,162,471
16.	Restaurant City	16,155,499
17.	MindJolt Games	14,214,241
18.	Mobile	13,724,133
19.	Roller Coaster Kingdom	13,610,418
20.	PetVille	12,828,490
21.	Facebook for BlackBerry® smartphones	12,002,396
22.	Christmas Cards!	11,652,794
23.	Top Friends	11,595,399
24.	Happy Pets	11,273,768
25.	Friend Quiz	10,573,173