14 DAY TRIAL // Zynga, a company that makes game apps for Facebook, is seeing user numbers skyrocket despite already being the largest app developer, by a safe margin, on the social network. In just two weeks the company added 12 million users, reaching a total current number of 72 million monthly active users, as All Facebook found.
Facebook apps can become a very lucrative business, despite the big number of competitors and the low price they go for, with most of them actually free. Just two weeks ago the company counted only 60 million users for the 34 games it offers, still far ahead of the second biggest Facebook app developer, Playfish, which boasts 35 million monthly users. The company owes much of its success to the big number of hit games that it produced, being one of the few developers to follow up a popular product with an even more popular one.
Currently the top application on Facebook by active daily users, FarmVille has been one of the company's biggest successes, adding up half a million new users per day and now reaching 5.3 million users daily. What's interesting is that the second app in that list is Farm Town, a very similar game developed by competitor SlashKey, which FarmVille “borrows” heavily from while also improving on some of its key aspects.
Zynga is now seeing a 50 percent rise in users in a month, a very impressive feat considering it has passed 70 million users, this while Facebook itself, officially, has only 250 million registered users. The company is said to be bringing in $100 million a year in revenue but with the current spike in users it may very well be on track for a lot more. To put this into perspective, Facebook, the entire social network, is estimated to make about $500 million this year and is still struggling with finding alternative revenue sources.