Eric von Coelln digs into the numbers behind social media, marketing, casual games and more.
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Top Social Games Take a Hit: Seasonal Declines or Something Bigger?

The top games on Facebok are down 11% from their highs this month. While it looks like it might be due to the holidays, the successive declines in the peaks of the latest Zynga releases might suggest the life cycle for social games is changing.

Five Reasons Facebook Games Are Not a Fad

As originally published at Games.com and later highlighted by Silicon Alley Insider.
No one questions whether sharing news or photos with friends and family is a fad, and when people get together to socialize, they often play games – from bridge to charades to Trivial Pursuit. As one of the largest social gathering spots on [...]

Game Developers Launch Initial Integration of Facebook Credits for Payments

All of the major game developers have launched a game with Facebook’s Credit payment system, with CrowdStar implementing them in all their games. This is a rundown of those implementations and the potential pros and cons for developers as we near Facebook’s official launch of their credits system.

Quick Hits: PetVille’s Massive Growth, Playfish Still Down Since EA Acquistion

PetVille gets massive ad campaign to jump grow over 2 million daily active users in a day; Zynga starts promoting some synchronous games; Playfish still seeing DAU traffic down since EA acquisition; Bejeweled Blitz gets some competition for gem-swapping audience.

After the Acquisition by EA, Playfish Titles See Traffic Drop

While the purchase by EA promised to give Playfish more resources, those weren’t apparently being used to drive more advertising into Playfish titles after the first week.