Birthday Becomes a Zoo and Pets Return on This Week's Top Growing Games by Daily Active Users
This week’s list of the top growing games on Facebook by daily active users, sourced from our sister site AppData, is mostly free of larger games bouncing back in traffic following the holiday slump — Farmville, for instance, stayed on the list for two weeks running after Christmas. But there are still post-holiday effects to be seen.
Most noticeable is the lack of many new up-and-comers. Before the holidays, quite a few new games were released; for now, developers seem to be resting and recouping, if not waiting for Facebook roll out major and long-planned changes to communication channels. The list below is mostly a rehash of last week, with some games swapping positions and very few dropping off the list entirely.
Top Gainers This Week – Games
| Name | DAU | Gain | Gain, % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Birthday Cards | 2,287,296 | +1,020,440 | +44.61 |
| 2. | Zoo World | 2,109,118 | +604,447 | +28.66 |
| 3. | Happy Island | 2,688,890 | +412,644 | +15.35 |
| 4. | Café World | 10,216,904 | +363,662 | +3.56 |
| 5. | PetVille | 4,579,399 | +347,112 | +7.58 |
| 6. | Texas HoldEm Poker | 5,555,997 | +157,423 | +2.83 |
| 7. | Wild Ones | 244,020 | +148,684 | +60.93 |
| 8. | Pet Society | 4,023,533 | +138,554 | +3.44 |
| 9. | Country Life | 2,388,200 | +127,931 | +5.36 |
| 10. | MindJolt Games | 2,451,551 | +123,901 | +5.05 |
| 11. | Tiki Farm | 1,115,421 | +104,852 | +9.40 |
| 12. | Mafia Wars | 6,068,705 | +104,711 | +1.73 |
| 13. | My Town | 293,058 | +103,021 | +35.15 |
| 14. | 開心寶貝 | 242,200 | +101,793 | +42.03 |
| 15. | Happy Aquarium | 6,499,476 | +94,319 | +1.45 |
| 16. | Country Story | 1,273,043 | +87,457 | +6.87 |
| 17. | Happy Pets | 2,514,658 | +79,910 | +3.18 |
| 18. | Island Paradise | 2,118,491 | +59,655 | +2.82 |
| 19. | Sorority Life | 1,026,199 | +59,269 | +5.78 |
| 20. | Band of Heroes | 132,204 | +56,088 | +42.43 |
The list is topped by Birthday Cards, which isn’t really a game, as we’ve noted in past weeks. The folks at RockYou! released a feature where activity on Cards is now rewarded with points on Zoo World, another RockYou! game that you’ll notice hit the number two spot this week. Zoo World is also accessible within Cards without installing the game, so it’s easier for new users to get started.
Cards has far more monthly users than Zoo World, but they’re about even on daily active users, so it’s not clear how far the promotion will take Zoo World. Still, the “Birthday Zoo” is a pretty clever idea.
Our other roundups have also seen a lot lately of the island trio: Happy Island, Tiki Farm and Island Paradise, coming in at number three, 11 and 18 this week. Aside from the fact that Tiki Farm is suddenly growing far faster than the larger Island Paradise there’s not much more to report than that all three seem to continue picking up steam.
Petville, from Zynga, has risen from last week’s number 12 to five with what might be significant new growth. Also take note, though, of Pet Society, a near competitor by Zynga’s own arch-rival Playfish, which has appeared at a slightly lower position. Along with Happy Pets, they form a trio of games that may be feeding off the popularity of the genre, like the island games.
Wild Ones continues its onslaught at number seven with 60 percent growth, about the same as last week, to 244,020 DAU. Finally, scan down at bit to 開心寶貝 (Happy Baby); it holds the distinction of being the only Chinese-language game to reach this list this week (it recently invaded our list of top emerging applications, along with several brethren).
