If you wondered how many of Facebook’s near billion users play games on the social network, data shows that 235 million people check in to play Facebook games every month. It is vital to Facebook’s finance and revenue, but Zynga are not the only big players in the mobile and social gaming space, King.com is second to Zynga drawing in about 51 million monthly active users. Other big players are the Angry Birds hit maker Rovio, Peak Games and Social Point.
Facebook makes money by taking a percentage of game sales and advertising. Games usually make their money from selling virtual items that make the games more options, or give you tools to beat the competition. Some of the most popular games are Word’s With Friends, Song Pop, The Sims, Dragon City and Angry Birds with Friends.
Game developers are attracted to Facebook for many reasons some of the obvious being it’s 950 million users base, the Facebook platform makes it easier and perhaps more trust-worthy when purchasing in-app goods.
Techcrunch reports that the new App Center design is getting about 2.5 times the amount of installs the older App directory had. The new App Center, puts the spotlight on what apps your friends have used and it also recommends apps based on other’s that you have used; all the apps are categorized and organized by top rated, highest grossing and trending which all likely had a role in the increased installs of Facebook applications.
Hopefully the rise in popularity with Facebook games will help increase Zynga’s dreadful share price…maybe
