Fastest growing Facebook game of the week: City building trend solidifies

(All rights reserved - Playdom)

Social City is again the fastest growing game and typifies the new fad for SimCity genre games with a social edge, while Bubble Island and Tiki Resort continue to jostle for 2nd place.

Towner could be Social City's new neighbour, accumulating just short of 1.3 million regular players since it opened to the general public on February 24.

Social City is developed by established Facebook focussed gaming company Playdom, while Towner's creator MetroGames has had a measure of success in the past but is not yet one of the big players.

Interestingly enough it was only in the last week that details regarding one of MetroGames' major investors emerged: it was in fact the aforementioned Playdom, who sunk $5 million into the company.

This only puts further pressure on Zynga to come up with the goods before their users go elsewhere for their city planning kicks. Zynga have never been a company to shy away from emerging trends.

They capitalized on criminal and gang based games with Mafia Wars, their own Restaurant City is in the fastest growth charts as a service industry genre game, and of course not forgetting FarmVille, PetVille and FishVille's unrelenting dominance of the virtual farming, pet and aquarium genres.

All eyes on Zynga then to see how they duplicate and elaborate on the current craze - unless, of course, someone else gets there first.

Fastest growing Facebook games on Friday March 19 at 18:00 GMT

01. Social City (7,069,776 = +3,836,533 / +54.3%)
02. Tiki Resort (2,850,464 = +808,728 / +28.4%)
03. Bubble Island (2,634,300 = +695,888 / +26.4%)
04. Texas HoldEm Poker (28,268,385 = +653,054 / +2.3%)
05. MindJolt Games (21,085,082 = +591,452 / +2.8%)
06. Towner (1,225,248 = +530,036 / +43.3%)
07. Keyboard Mash! (1,031,015 = +451,693 / +43.8%)
08. Jeux Gratuits (1,225,229 = +380,451 / +31.1%)
09. Zoo Paradise (818,347 = +341,073 / +41.9%)
10. Restaurant City (15,504,182 = +297,213 / +1.9%)

Numbers in brackets relate to total monthly users, the increase in monthly users, and the weekly percentage growth.
Source: appdata.com