Smiles, Amazon, Netflix, MySpace, dating, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Applications asking users to share smiles or friendship with their friends, an Amazon sweepstakes, videos, photos, Netflix, Myspace, dating, Identified and more made our list of emerging apps by monthly active users this week.  The apps grew from between 130,000 and 360,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

Friendship apps, *Smiles, Besten Freunde and Meilleurs Amis force users to invite their friends before using the app. Although this drives growth, it does not create a good user experience.

A sweepstakes app, Amazon Sweepstakes, grew by 270,000 MAU. Through the app, users can enter to win Amazon prizes and invite their friends.

A group of web integrations, Shopkick, Netflix and Myspace were top gainers this week. Portal Skol is another website on the list and the only other marketing campaign besides Amazon’s contest to make the list. Skol is a popular beer in Brazil.

Shufflr, which grew by 210,000 MAU, delivers daily videos to a users’ Wall.

Dating apps Twoo and Identified made the list, growing by 160,000 MAU and 140,000 MAU, respectively. BandPlayer by Noomiz, which allows musicians to customize Pages so users can interact with music via contests, campaigns and more, gained 130,000 MAU.

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

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Football, beer, Myspace, Netflix and more on this week’s yop 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

An app that allows users to personalize football jerseys and then share them to the stream, and act testing how many types of beers a user has tried, as well as a few Connect integrations and professional apps comprise our list of the fastest emerging Facebook applications by monthly active users this week.

The apps on our list grew from between 110,000 and 470,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

Make Your Jersey topped the list with 470,000 MAU after allowing users to select their football (soccer) team, share it to the stream and invite friends via Facebook or email. Another very popular app, The Beer List Challenge, grew by 250,000 MAU and allow users to share a quiz of beers they have tried to the stream. Photo Roll allows users to interact with friends’ photos; it grew by 200,000 MAU.

An app called “best friends” asks users to invite their friends to engage in the app. ?????? grew by 180,00 MAU, Besten Freunde grew by 130,000 MAU and Meilleurs Amis by 120,000 MAU. Then there were a pair of professional networking applications. Talent.me grew 120,000 MAU and when the user signs up, the app automatically invites that user’s entire network to use it. Then, Identified grew by  110,000 MAU, and combines educational professional experience to ostensibly tell you how “in demand” you are.

The rest of the apps included a Connect integration called Saavn, a music website, which grew by 160,000 MAU. Another Connect integration, Myspace,  grew by 150,000 MAU. Then there was a profile banner application, Profile Banner Welcome, which creates an integrated photo from several at the top of the profile; it grew by 150,000 MAU. Netflix’s app grew by 120,000 MAU (it’s difficult to see exactly what the app does unless one has an account and is signed in), Welcome tab by 120,000 MAU and finally, Victoria’s Secret Spotlight grew by 110,000 MAU.

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

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Free MySpace Mafia Wars Cheats

Many people are searching for MySpace Mafia war cheats on a daily basis and this is due to the growing popularity and growing competition found in this popular social networking game.

Due to the sheer size and complexity of this game many people are finding it very difficult to succeed and gain a lot of enjoyment from it. Yet because the game is so playable and so addictive many people find themselves going back day after day, night after night only to lose fights, get robbed, lose all their money and never grow their family.
To get good at MW you are going to have two adapt to a few cheats and strategies and begin applying them every time you play.

Here are a couple of my top cheats:

Firstly, I recommend for getting about fights. Until you have lots of energy and a huge family to look after you, you will probably lose most of them which as you know isn't a good strategy! You have to think like a real member of a Mafia family. Their strength was in exactly that, the family. They had numbers. There was not just one guy from Sicily going around trying to kick everybody's rear end.

Secondly, you should concentrate on doing the jobs and levelling up as well as increasing your energy levels. With this your family will grow and you will grow stronger. So when somebody does attempt to cross you, you will have your family there to help.
Thirdly, go to a gaming forumor better still a Mafia Wars page and write a compelling review. State how much you play the game, how good you are at it and where you think you will be in a couple of months time. This will attract players and it will attract high-level players to join you. Having high level players in your family is a recipe for success.

Unfortunately there are no codes for MySpace Mafia war cheats. You cannot type in the secret word that will give you 1 trillion Godfather points! Simply learn some killer strategies and go to work.

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Zynga vs. MindJolt: MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe has buyout spree

by Joe Osborne, Posted Apr 20th 2011 2:05PM

Wasting no time after MySpace's imminent failure, founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe has acquired two new social game development companies through MindJolt, his own social game platform. MindJolt gobbled up both SGN and Hallpass Media, a leading developer and publisher of social mobile games and a popular free online game network, respectively.

The terms or amounts spent on the buyouts are undisclosed, but DeWolfe said this in a statement: "The acquisition of SGN and Hallpass broadens our content offering and extends our reach," DeWolfe said. "Mindjolt becomes a cross-platform 'triple threat' with great games across mobile, social, and web platforms. This three-pillar approach enables MindJolt to deliver our games wherever people choose to play, and differentiates our service from others in this space."

As you can see from his previous endeavors, DeWolfe aims big--all the time. And the former MySpace chief appears to refuse defeat in this next venture, laying the framework for a social gaming company to compete with the bigwigs like Zynga and EA's Playfish studio. SGN, founded in 2008, has seen its mobile games like Mini Tycoon Casino, F.A.S.T., and Skies of Glory top the charts on the Apple App Store, and now brings those games to MindJolt. Not to mention its development talent.

Hallpass will help MindJolt expand its reach beyond Facebook with a network of over 4 million players and 1,500 new games. The company is already well-positioned to take the FarmVille creator head on in the Facebook arena as well with an app that enjoys 6.8 million monthly players and over 1.2 million daily fans.

With these two acquisitions, it appears that MindJolt is working to expand where Zynga has just begun to venture into: mobile and the rest of the Internet. However, Zynga already has two of the top mobile developers, Newtoy, and Area/Code. Will MindJolt be able to stake its claim on mobile before Zynga has a chance to capitalize on its own recent buyouts?

That's not even the end of it. According to AdWeek, DeWolfe (pictured right) plans to follow Zynga's lead in other areas as well like advertising. Zynga has already been wildly successful with brand integration in its games--though perhaps not for gameplay's sake--and MindJolt aims for the same results. "With 25 to 30 million unique users, there's a critical mass of users there," DeWolfe said to AdWeek. "We can go to ad agencies and to top media buyers and integrate their brands into our games."

And with DeWolfe looking to sell more virtual goods too, Zynga is looking at an assault from all angles. The only problem is that CEO Mark Pincus and his crew have already been at this game for a year. DeWolfe and MindJolt are already at a disadvantage. Though, DeWolfe has plenty experience in this department, creating MySpace and bringing social networking into the mainstream. MindJolt just might have a better shot at toppling Zynga than most companies that rise to the challenge, but we won't see the dust settle on this battle for some time.

[Image Credits: MindJolt and Mark Robert Halper]

How well against Zynga do you MindJolt will do given these acquisitions? Should Zynga be wary of MindJolt, or is this just another company looking for a sliver of the social gaming pie? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.
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Tags: acquisition, adweek, areacode, buyout, Chris DeWolfe, ea, farmville, hallpass, Mindjolt, mindjolt games, mobile games, mobile gaming, mobile social games, myspace, newtoy, playfish, sgn, social games, zynga

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MySpace Founders’ MindJolt Buys Game Companies SGN and Hallpass Media

Former MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe is stepping up his game strategy with the acquisition of social mobile game developer/publisher Social Gaming Network (SGN) and free online game network Hallpass Media this week. The move comes a little over a year after DeWolfe and a team of other MySpace leaders bought San Francisco casual-social gaming company MindJolt.

In the last 12 months, MindJolt has been expanding its reach beyond its Facebook games platform into web publishing and ad platforms as a means to monetize. Meanwhile, its presence on Facebook has been going through some fluctuations. A year ago it had nearly 17 million monthly active users and 1.90 million daily active users across all of its properties, according to AppData, our tracking service for top apps and developers on Facebook — a drop-off from previous months. Then traffic grew over last summer before starting on a long and increasingly gradual decline. Today, it has 10.5 million MAU and 1.43 million DAU.

Despite the shrinkage, MindJolt said last November that it was making $20 million in annual revenue. Other Facebook game developers have found ways to increase revenues even as MAU and DAU decline over time and it appaers that MindJolt is one of them.

DeWolfe’s long-running plan for MindJolt has been to ramp up monetization through brand partnerships and virtual goods, expand the company’s global presence both online and via smartphones, and work more closely with game developers to create games. SGN and Hallpass Media will help on both the second and third points by adding a library of iOS, Android, and online games as well as an online network of over 4 million gamers. According to the press release announcing the acquisitions, SGN has “a host” of new games set to release on iOS and Android in 2011.

For SGN, in any case, it’s a quiet ending to a prolonged saga. The company was one of the first to get into social gaming, having been spun off from FreeWebs in April of 2008 as it began to get traction on Facebook’s platform. As early rivals, specifically Zynga, doubled down on Facebook gaming, SGN decided to switch focus to mobile by the end of its first year. It went on to launch a number of successful titles for iOS devices, although it has faced intense competition from a wide range of other developers large and small.

The New York Times first wrote about the acquisitions, yesterday, with a look at MySpace’s decline in contrast to MindJolt’s rise. DeWolfe’s former social networking platform has lost users, lost game developers, and reportedly is losing revenue so badly that anonymous sources told the paper MySpace is expected to fetch no more than $100 million when owner News Corp auctions it off this year. News Corp is the one that ousted DeWolfe when it bought MySpace in 2009, and now, says the NY Times, DeWolfe may be one of the bidders looking to buy the dying the network.

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