EVCin

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

Facebook depricated Notificaitons for applications on March 1st – Clearly it’s not the doomsday scenario that some feared as developers are mostly relying on email or fan page posts to replace application-to-user notifications, while user-to-user notifications are being facilitated through creative use of Wall Posts.

Zynga innovates with a progress bar to get users to sign up for mutliple communication devices. Playfish’s Gangster City doesn’t look like it’s sticky enough as DAUs flatten out. And Zynga Poker touts 6 million daily users – but they still haven’t reached that number yet on Facebook.

When viral marketing tactics were curtailed by Facebook’s platform and policy updates, the question wasn’t whether developers would take a hit, but how much? And whether those that thrived on aggressive viral tactics would be hurt more than those that didn’t. I look at what appears to be behind those who did well and those that took a major hit.

Facebook started enforcing a slew of application policies over the last week, forcing game developers to revamp their viral marketing. Here are three of the top changes and how top developers are revamping their viral marketing tactics.