It’s a good month for Zynga. The company has one game which continues to thrive as the largest Facebook application ever and has a second application, Café World, which has raced up the charts in just a couple weeks. Playfish, now the second largest developer, also has had a great month with close to 20 percent growth, however it hasn’t been able to match Zynga who is simply dominating the Facebook platform.
As I wrote last week, while covering the explosive growth of Café World, the Facebook platform has essentially become a large gaming platform. While there are other community applications which continue to thrive, there is no comparison between games and the other applications. Facebook gaming has ballooned into a massive industry with virtual goods driving much of the revenue growth.
FarmVille has become an icon on the platform as no other application has come close to matching its massive user base. It has almost doubled the second largest application, Causes, in terms of monthly active users and has tripled the Facebook iPhone application in terms of daily active users. The second most popular, non-Facebook developed, application based on daily active users happens to be Café World which has just under 7 million daily active users.
The results have been nothing short of astonishing. If Zynga keeps at this pace, the company could soon come close to matching Facebook’s own revenue, at least until Facebook releases their payment platform and opens the gift shop to developers. Playfish has also proven to be a stellar company which not only creates top tier games but also has a great revenue model.
At the Social Ad Summit in New York City two weeks ago, Sebastien De Halleux, COO and Co-Founder of Playfish, emphasized the company’s focus on maintaining an amazing user experience. This means that rather than placing distracting banner advertisements, they have focused on production-heavy advertising. Comparable to television advertisement production costs, many advertisers have yet to venture into this area, leaving virtual goods sales to pick up the slack.
While the advertising revenue may not be at the levels Zynga, Playfish, and other companies would like, virtual goods are doing a great job of filling the void. As I wrote last week, virtual good sales are expected to surpass $1 billion in the U.S. alone this year. Much of those transactions will be taking place on the Facebook platform. Not surprisingly, Zynga will account for the vast majority of those transactions.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next 6 to 12 months as the growth in this space continues to be phenomenal.
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so addicted
Comment by Cynthia Prime — October 19, 2009 @ 5:42 pm
I love Farmville, but I just can’t get on! i can’t even get on Facebook successfully!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [wail :'( ]
Comment by Karen — October 20, 2009 @ 12:58 am
I am a major fan of FarmVille on Facebook. The big problem I have is with the offers page that they have. They advertise for you to be able to get in game FarmCash when you sign up for services with your cell phone. I have completed several of these, even to the point of them showing up on my cell phone bill as subscriptions, but the Offerpal company does not give the credit they are supposed to. They tell you to email them and they guarantee you a response within 3 days. Well suffice to say, that is entirely incorrect. I have emailed the support email address several times and have not yet received a response even after a week. I went to their website to find some other contact information and found a number to call. It says its directing you to a call center, but so far dialing the operator or customer service only gets you to a voicemail. There are only two individuals that are receiving these calls into their voicemail, and no response from anyone from leaving a voicemail. They really don’t even give you the option to speak to a person directly. How is it then that I am supposed to have any recourse things settled? Definitely extremely unsatisfied with what they do with those offers.
Comment by Adam — October 20, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
HI DOGS ITS ME STEPHEN MANLEY
Comment by stephen — October 21, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
I cannot get on to FarmVille tonight. I was on earlier and planted raspberries to be harvested at 12:40 and now it won’t come back on for me. I am getting upset about this. Can you help me out?
Comment by Facebook User — October 22, 2009 @ 2:21 am
i cannot get on to texes holdem poker or farmville is there a problem pls let me know thank you
Comment by farhad — October 22, 2009 @ 3:02 am
I was unable to access my farmville today…few of the items on my land just wasnt downloading….can u help me out?
Comment by Rumeli Chakravarty — October 22, 2009 @ 7:40 am
ScamVille will only continue to grow until eventually punished by Facebook or the FTC. Have you read what our angel investor– Markus Frind– has to say about it?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/scamville-hotornot-plentyoffish-facebook-myspace/
Comment by Dennis Yu — November 1, 2009 @ 6:26 am
I love playing Farmville. The only thing is that I cannot open my market to buy any seeds or anything else. It has been almost 5 days since I have not been able to open it. Please advise on what to do or if you are able to fix this problem. I have done everything! I have over $100,000 to spend. I can do everything but open the market. Please HELP!!
Beverly Arnold
Comment by Beverly Arnold — November 30, 2009 @ 5:59 am
I WANT TOO KNOW WHY I CAN NOT GET ON FACEBOOK FARMVILLE TOO PLAY ON MY DIFFERENT FARMS AND MY WIFE TOO BE CAN NOT GET ON HERS ETHER. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM
Comment by jerome koopmeiners — December 4, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
can't connect with my farm
Comment by Elaine Tupou — December 5, 2009 @ 9:56 pm
I was short of friends to upgrade my chicken coop so the game said that I could pay 2 farmville cash to complete the work….the game then took 10!!! What happened to all my hard earned cash!!!!
Comment by sarah duguid — February 24, 2010 @ 8:25 pm
I can't use iPhone newsfeed to get farmville things like bonuses and stuff like used to. When they gonna fix it
Comment by Steve — March 5, 2010 @ 7:29 am