Facebook Application Development

This week’s AppData list of top gaining apps, measured by most new daily active users (DAU), has quite a few new appearances — not as many as we counted in our stats roundup over at sister site Inside Social Games, but still more than average.

It’s also another week where games have represented at least half of the list — in this case, exactly half, as well as holding four of the top five. Have you thought of building a game lately?

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	FarmVille	28,417,879	+936,658	+3.30
2.	Mafia Wars	6,631,394	+562,689	+8.49
3.	Yearbook	465,482	+288,444	+61.97
4.	Gangster City	158,236	+158,093	+99.91
5.	Little Warrior	190,999	+150,020	+78.54
6.	Birthday Cards	2,432,037	+144,741	+5.95
7.	Static FBML	678,938	+142,631	+21.01
8.	Happy Island	2,823,708	+134,818	+4.77
9.	Nicest Person Contest	181,947	+119,457	+65.65
10.	PetVille	4,694,108	+114,709	+2.44
11.	Mobile	6,435,729	+98,239	+1.53
12.	My Town	386,033	+92,975	+24.08
13.	Calendario de Amigos	223,727	+90,374	+40.39
14.	開心寶貝	325,873	+83,673	+25.68
15.	Texas HoldEm Poker	5,634,183	+78,186	+1.39
16.	UNO™	284,511	+64,368	+22.62
17.	RockYou Live	266,859	+62,287	+23.34
18.	Bumper Sticker	543,411	+40,334	+7.42
19.	Garden World	301,909	+39,981	+13.24
20.	Photos I Love!	95,285	+37,729	+39.60

As always, an app’s presence on this list doesn’t mean that it has definitely gained the number of daily users listed; any player who swings by for a single try will be briefly listed as a DAU gain.

Because the gains are a bit smaller this week than last, that effect is more pronounced than usual. Take the first non-game app listed for example:  Yearbook. With over four million players, its increase of 288,000 daily users could just be a wobble in its traffic.

But there are a few that still deserve attention. Birthday Cards, the next non-game app, is decelerating from the blazing growth streak that put it on top of last week’s list. It’s followed by Static FBML, a developer app used to put HTML or Facebook markup on Pages.

Looking down, the friend quiz Nicest Person Contest is actually another app that has been trending down for weeks, but has made a slight rally. Most of the apps further down would also seem to fit this definition, but don’t miss RockYou Live — its MAU is steady but DAU is up, suggesting that existing users are becoming more engaged with the app.

That could be because RockYou is tying together all its major apps, including Birthday Cards and Zoo World, making them accessible from within on another. In general, the strategy appears to be working; besides a dip in the past day, RockYou’s DAU across all apps is trending upward fairly strongly, as seen below.