LOLapps reveals secrets to Ravenwood Fair success

Ravenwood Fair Stats
In just the two short months that LOLapps' Ravenwood Fair has been in town it's garnered 4.7 million monthly players, according to AppData's findings. And for a company to round up and maintain this many users in the midst of a Facebook privacy crisis that crippled the game for days is certainly impressive. So, how did they do it? LOLapps recently released a cutesy yet informative set of graphs and pie charts breaking down not only exactly how they approach players like you and I, but how they keep us coming back for more carnie craziness.

While we won't bore you with too many specifics, there are some interesting facts here. For example, LOLapps relies heavily on cross promotion (60 percent)--much like the recent CityVille sign that's plopped itself in your farms--and far less on ads (eight percent) and 32 percent viral promotion (i.e. lots of News Feed messages making their way into your Feed and more) in its first phase. But then something changes in their strategy, which is when you'll see plenty more advertisements on your Facebook pages as they jump to 30 percent while cross promos and viral marketing level out.

Find the full chart and even more interesting (and hilarious) statistics behind the break.
What's most interesting is LOLapps' gender breakdown. According to the company, 60 percent of Facebook gamers are women, beating out men in every age bracket by huge margins. So, thank you, ladies, for keeping the genre alive. But don't think that the recent privacy incident didn't effect Ravenwood Fair at least a little bit. You'll see a significant drop in the game's player base right around the end of October into the beginning of November, but luckily it bounced right back and it appears even more gamers are enjoying building their own spooky carnivals today.

It's rare that a social game developer is this open about its numbers and reach, so gobble this info up while you still can. Not to mention that a lot of this information could be indicative of how other social game developers handle bringing in new users and keeping them there.

Now, 4.4 million players sure is a lot, but what does mean for the citizens Ravenwood Fair specifically? It means 15 million hot dogs eaten, 10 million spooked guests, 6.5 million trees chopped and, as LOLapps puts it so quaintly, "5 million NPCs who took a crap in the thunderbox." And with no signs of Ravenwood Fair stopping, it might be time to build some more outhou--er, we mean thunderboxes.

Expanding Boundaries of Facebook Games.

What do you think of LOLapps suddenly revealing many of their secrets? Is it time that more social game developers do the same?

Top 25 Facebook Games - December 2011: FarmVille Strikes Back

I guess in Facebook game years, FarmVille is kind of like Obi Wan Kenobi. And boy, did Zynga's farming game come back stronger than we could possibly imagine, or what? As The Sims Social falls from its cushy number two spot after losing 7.9 million monthly players, FarmVille swoops in with a 2.8 million gain this month. CityVille lost a few million, but still clings to the top.

EA and Playfish's slugger dipped even further on December's daily players chart to fifth place with a loss of 1.1 million players. (This is what we chalk all that up to.) Of course, CastleVille--Zynga's fastest-growing game ever--makes a grand entrance into both top 25 charts. The kingdom-builder shot up to fifth place in monthly players with 20.8 million, and an impressive second place in daily players with 7.3 million. That should be the shot in the arm the company needs for its imminent public offering, no?

Not so fast, considering Mafia Wars 2 didn't even make the charts in daily players, the best measure of a game's dedicated (and paying) audience. Zynga launched Mafia Wars 2 in October. The game does, however, have 11.3 million monthly players, which ties it with Wooga's Diamond Dash. That puzzle game is nine months old.
Top 25 Facebook Games by MAU
An interesting newcomer to this lineup is Nordeus's Top Eleven, which creeps up in 25th place on the daily players charts with 950,000. Unfortunately, the rest of these charts look like business as usual, aside from Zynga's major losses including Adventure World, which hemorrhaged 4.3 million monthly players. Though, it's refreshing to see some more developers continue to thrive in the top 25 charts, like King.com with Bubble Witch Saga and 6waves Lolapps with Ravenskye City.

[Source and Image Credit: Inside Social Games]

How can The Sims Social reclaim its second place spot? What other games do you think deserve to be on this list?