EVCin

CityVille leveraged new email invite capabilities and a first mover advantage – of sorts – to help it hit 100 million Monthly Active Users

Successful viral marketing promos in FarmVille have been quickly passed along to two other Zynga hits: Cafe World and Mafia Wars. Whether they will see similar traffic boosts remains to be seen.

Users seem to be struggling in finding games in the new Facebook homepage redesign. While there is a lot of promise in the newly introduced games dashboard, further education cannot overcome the fundamental design flaw of not having “games” as a persistent part of the site navigation, visible from every page.

Now that Mafia Wars by Zynga is charging close to $6 for the new Thailand expansion pack, does this new wrinkle in the freemium model for social games signal an inevitable emulation of MMORPGs?

I hope you all had a great New Year’s Eve celebration. While 2009 saw the amazing growth of social games, looking ahead, I wonder whether 2010 will be the year where:

More complex game mechanics catch on?
Facebook changes continue to take away the institutional learnings from leaders like Zynga, helping to level the playing [...]