Zynga games, War Commander, Causes, Chase Community Giving and more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps

Zynga Slingo is No. 1 on our list of top growing Facebook apps by monthly active users this week, adding 7.8 million new players. Zynga games made up four out of the top five apps, and CastleVille came in at No. 18.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 400,000 and 7.8 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Thursday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

View the original article here

Facebook Allows Duplicate Community Pages to Be Merged Into Official Pages

Facebook has added a new “Merge” option to the Resources tab of the Page editor. It allows Page admins to apply to roll duplicate community Pages into an identically named official Page they control, adding the fans and check-ins of the community Pages to the official Page. Facebook has privately done this kind of merger in the past for prominent celebrities and businesses, but the option has never before been publicly available.

The merge tool will allow official Page admins to gain the ability to publish content to and target with ads users who’ve accidentally Liked an unofficial version of their Page, helping some Pages instantly grow to their rightful size.

For background, Facebook has two kinds of Pages: official, and community. Official Pages are those purposefully created by a user to represent a business, public figure, or piece of content they own, and they have the ability to publish content to those that Like them. Community Pages are created when users create a new Place to check in, or add something without an existing Page to their Likes, work places, or education history. Community Pages have no admins or ability to publish content to the news feed.

Sometimes users accidentally create or Like community Pages for things that have an official Page. These duplicate community Pages clutter the search experience and confuse users trying to Like the official Page of something they care about. This led Facebook to at one point offer a merge tool for duplicate Places, but bugs and misunderstanding of how to use the tool led to issues so Facebook removed it. Recently, Facebook launched the Places Editor to get users to flag duplicate Pages.

Previously, when prominent official Pages found they were missing thousands or even millions of fans that were scattered on various community Pages, Facebook has agreed to merge the Pages. In one situation, this led soccer player Lionel Messi to gain seven million fans in seven hours. This was only available to admins who had an direct line of communication with Facebook, though, such as big advertisers and celebrities.

Now, any Page admin can apply to have Pages merged through the “Merge duplicate pages” tool in the Page editor’s Resources tab. Instructions for the tool can be found in the Help Center documentation, confirming that this isn’t just a limited test.

If there are any eligible community Pages with identical names to the official Page being edited, admins can select them and initiate the merge. Admins can apply merge up to five community Pages at a time, and can submit multiple merge requests. Facebook will then take a few days to verify the application and ensure the Pages are in fact duplicates.

If approved, Facebook will take the fans and check-ins from the community pages and add them to the admin’s official Page. No other content from the community Pages is carried over, the official Page’s content will remain unchanged, and the newfound fans of the official Page are not notified of the change. The Help Center states that “merging is irreversible”, so admins should be sure they know what they’re doing.

The option should excite Page admins, as they may have the opportunity to quickly add people who truly care about their Page to their Like count. It should improve the Facebook experience for Page admins who’ll no longer have to ask “why can’t I market to these people who were clearly trying to Like my Page”.

Mergers will lead to more news feed impressions and clicks of a Pages links, helping the drive a return on investment on their Facebook marketing. All Page admins should check to see if there are any community Pages eligible for them to merge.

Update: Some admins are reporting that even though there are duplicate community Page versions of their official Page, they aren’t showing up as elegible for a merge in the tool. Facebook may be expanding eligibility slowly as it monitors the initial usage of the new product. If you don’t see any eligible Pages now, check back in a few weeks as Facebook may expand eligibility to similar but not identical Pages.

For Facebook Page marketing and advertising strategies, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible.

[Thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip]

View the original article here

CityVille City Works Community Building: Everything you need to know

by Brandy Shaul, Posted Mar 28th 2011 8:33PM

A new community building has been added to CityVille in the form of the City Works building. According to a new pop-up you'll receive when logging into the game, the City Works building is essential for your town (although that's questionable, as you'll soon see), and comes with a high population boost to boot.

The building itself can be found under the Community Buildings section of the store for 6,000 coins. You'll need to hammer the frame five times to complete its construction, but rather than collecting items to finish this one off, you'll need to go back to the friend recruitment method, adding a whopping 12 people (in total) to your Crew before the building can be opened. You might be lucky enough to have the Director and Deputy Director's positions filled for you by "Bonus Crew," but otherwise, you'll be able to pay 2 City Cash per position, or send out individual gift requests to those friends that you think would be most likely to accept.

Once your City Works building is entirely staffed, you'll be able to add an additional 350 citizens to your town's overall population. As for the part about the building being "essential" to your town - that is a bit questionable. There are no quests (currently) associated with building the City Works structure, and it doesn't seem to actually serve any function once it's been built. It seems like this is really just one of those buildings that those who need a higher population would like to build, but everyone else should probably save their land for other things.

We'll make sure to let you know if the City Works building is updated to include a function other than a population boost in the future, so keep checking back.

Did you build a City Works building in your town, or do you need that land for something else? What's your current population cap in CityVille? Share with us in the comments!
Bookmark this site!

Tags: city works building, cityville, cityville city works building, cityville community building, cityville community buildings, zynga

View the original article here