Sunday, May 27, 2012

Top 6 Facebook Games

Facebook has become the most popular social network online, with more than 400 million active users online from all over the world (but mainly from North America, and specifically the United States). There have been a couple of months (mainly on holidays) in the last year when Facebook's number of page views exceeded that of Google by a few million in the United States.

Just imagine that, Facebook had more than 300,000,000,000 (that's 300 billion) views in a month, more than the biggest search engine. And people agree that the trend will continue, and soon Facebook may achieve a stable monthly page view count that is higher than that of Google's. The main reason why this is happening is that there are millions of people who just use the Internet to communicate with their friends and other people. Even if they use Google to find some information, the number of searches is most likely to be lower than that of visited pages and profiles on Facebook.

But Facebook isn't just a social network for communication. Everything has changed with the introduction of Facebook apps, which can be developed by anyone with good programming skills, using their proprietary API and code. There are now hundreds of thousands of Facebook apps, ranging from calendar and task management utilities to various interesting games, and the developers are making millions off of them.

Below, you'll find some of the most popular (and best by definition) games that you can play on Facebook.

FarmVille. This is the most popular Facebook game at the moment, with over 90 million active users (as of March). It's a simple, yet very addicting game where you own and take care of your own farm. You can plant crops, raise animals, earn coins, create a garden and do a lot of other things. You can partner or compete with other players, help them and let them help you, which is a good integration with Facebook's main mission.

Mafia Wars. As you might've guessed, in this game you play as a Mafia boss. While it is not a 3D game (like "Mafia", a great game for Windows), it's still very interesting, mainly because you play with other real people and never know what will happen next. You can launder money, run illegal underground games, buy machine guns and "remove" other players, and do other things that Mafiosi do, only without actually breaking the law.

Bejeweled Blitz. This is the Facebook version of the extremely popular gem puzzle game, which is already available for most platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone and others. The game play is the same - you have to match gems, but that doesn't make it any less addictive. You just switch from an offline version that you have to install to an online one, which also gives you the possibility to compete (in scores) with other Facebook users.

Restaurant City. This game is a lot like FarmVille, only instead of taking care of a farm, you own and run a restaurant. Your duties will include managing your employees and money, finding ingredients to create new dishes (you can also trade them with your friends on Facebook), and do other things that businessmen in the restaurant industry do. It's a pretty entertaining alternative to FarmVille, if you're not really into farming and countryside:-).

Texas Hold 'Em Poker. Now this is a very cool game. It gives you the possibility to play the great Texas Hold 'Em Poker without having to sit at a (sometimes) uncomfortable table with other people who may or may not smoke and drink. You can play poker with any of your friends right from the comfort of your chair or sofa. And probably the best thing is that you won't have to learn to have a "poker face":-), unless you're using a web camera, of course.

Petville and Pet Society. These are two very similar games where you need to take care of your pet. You must feed him, play with him, groom and bath it and otherwise nurture him. Pet Society also allows you to make virtual money by competing in races, gambling, gardening and visiting friends. If you liked (or even remember) the old Tamagotchi devices or similar software for your computer, you'll definitely like this game.

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