Facebook, Games | featured news

Many businesses are using gamification to get people hooked on their products and services — and it is working, thanks to smartphones and the Internet.

Facebook Inc. and Zynga Inc. are changing the rules of their relationship. In a bid to become less reliant on Facebook, Zynga disclosed in a filing on Thursday that it has amended the terms of its relationship with the world's largest social network so that it can now host its Web games outside of Facebook's platform, among other things. The new agreement also leaves the door open for Facebook to produce its own games and become a direct competitor to Zynga.

We're going to feel a little guilty if this news gets you fired. But you can now play "Angry Birds" on Facebook.

Zynga offers free games through Facebook, then studies data on how its audience plays them. It uses its findings to fiddle with the games to get people to play longer, tell more Facebook friends about them and buy more virtual goods.

This is a historic moment for social games. “FarmVille,” the hit Facebook game among all hit Facebook games, is no longer the top app on the social network. For the first time since claiming the top spot more than a year ago in August 2009, FarmVille has fallen to second place in terms of monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData.com. Coming in at no. 1 now is the app “Phrases.”

Japanese social games company DeNA is out to take down American rivals Facebook and Zynga.

Ready your virtual cattle and the Microsoft branding iron. Zynga announced today that its hit social game FarmVille on Facebook has now launched on Microsoft's MSN Games portal.

Social gaming startup Zynga is seeing some impressive traction. It now boats 129 million monthly active users across its portfolio of more than 30 games, according to both Inside Facebook's AppData(see chart) and Developer Analytics.