Big Fight for Top Spot in Social Gaming | SocialExcerpts
Big Fight for Top Spot in Social Gaming Mar 21
Recent statistics derived from AppData shows Berlin’s Wooga is in a neck-to-neck fight to opt for a second place among social gaming experts and is in an effort to replace Zynga on Facebook. Going by the metrics of daily users, Zynga is no longer the biggest player of social games on the world’s largest social networking site. The crazy turn of event took place when OMGPOP’s Draw Something, a Pictionary-like game acquired the top spot.
According to the AppData leaderboard, Draw Something snatched the top spot, in social gaming, from Zynga’s ‘Words With Friends’ in terms of users. While ‘Words With Friends’ now has a record 8.6 million daily active users, ‘Draw Something’ attracts over 10.8 million daily users through Facebook alone. Presently, OMGPOP has 25 million registered users and approximately 300 million monthly active users.
Wooga, on the other hand is only half close to Zynga in terms of users. But it aims to surpass the count and acquire a glorious second spot in social games. They are focusing more on improving user engagement of their social games to make people return more often and spend longer time, playing.
Among other big players in the Social Gaming arena the popular names are Slashkey, 5 Minutes, Playfish, and Rovio Mobile. Slashkey, known for creating Farm Town, currently has 8 million monthly users that generate around $16million revenue. The Sims Social, a very popular social game developed by Playfish, has 70 million active users and is generating about $250 million per quarter. A must mention in the social gaming arena is the Angry Birds, developed by Rovio Mobile. With 30 million daily active users, gamers are glued on to this game. Time spent on this game by the users is a record 300 million minutes, daily. The company earned $10 million in 2010-11 through Angry Birds, and are reportedly said to be looking at $100 million this year.
One thing is clear from this tussle amongst social gaming players – What’s up one day, may go down the next. This is the prime characteristic of any hit-driven business.
