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

I have just created a page on Facebook. I will use it to post my blog updates, especially the new things written about the environment and my favourite online games.

Café World has become very popular this past few months, and has reached over one million players. But this game is constantly changing it’s features, adding new levels, dishes and gifts and it’s hard to keep up. That is why I try to post all my findings, and the ones of my readers who post in the comments sections.

Anto’s World was originally meant to feature positive things in live, in the environment, science, technology, and arts domaine. But playing games make you happy, and Café World is a non-violent game. That’s why I love playing and analyzing that game

Anto’s World

Promote your Page too

This morning I woke up, opened my email account and saw that I had received about 30 new emails from StumbleUpon. All those emails were from SU friends who wanted to share web pages with me. Those 30 emails were sent only during the 8 hours time that I was sleeping. Throughout the day I would receive even more! This can be enough to drive some people mad!

But do I like the new Share with friends feature? Of course I do! I use it myself two or three times a week and it saves me a lot of time! But I do feel bad that my friends receive emails every time I use that trait, and I would like to deactivate my own account from receiving emails as well. Since I regularly stumble through new pages with my StumbleUpon toolbar, I don’t really need to receive a notification email each time a friend wants to share a page with me.

But I don’t know how to execute the email deactivation! Can anyone help me please? If you can, please write it in the comment area, and I will regularly update this post in order to make it helpful for others as well. I do like my SU friends to share web pages with me. I just don’t want the emails.

Thanks a lot!

Updated Answer

Here’s what Nicola suggested:

• On your SU main page, or favourite page, click on “Preferences”;
• Scroll down to “Communication & Privacy” and uncheck the box called “Email me my messages”;
• Don’t forget to click on “Save preferences” at the bottom.

I have tried that yesterday and so far no emails for 24 hours! So I am just enjoying stumbling through my friends’ pages that were shared with me!

Another Way

Valerionson has suggested another way of deactivating the notification emails. When you do receive such an email, scroll to the bottom of the page where you have an option to stop all notification emails. I haven’t really tried that myself, but it should work.