Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, September 14, 2009

• Cops & Robbers, Facebook Style
• Play4Iran: A Twitter-Based Iranian Political Action Game
• Finnish Social Games Developer Ironstar Helsinki Continues Expanding
• ToyBots Woozees: SGN’s Secret Project Connects Physical, Online Toys
• Zynga Goes to the Mattresses: 22 Lawsuits Filed This Year, and Counting

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

• Fatfoogoo Expanding into Social Games
• EA Executive Joins Outspark
• Zynga Bringing Offers In House with DoubleDing?
• Come2Play Adds Virtual Currency Monetization Platform

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

• Tapjoy Releases Free Version of its Ad Optimization Platform
• PlaySpan Survey Shows Some Interesting Virtual Goods Stats
• Notes from GDC Austin: Juicy MMO and Virtual World Monetization Numbers
• MySpace Exec Jason Oberfest Joins Gaming Company Ngmoco

Thursday, September 17, 2009

• Conduit Labs Raises $3 Million
• USA Network Continues Social Gaming Expansion with New Deals
• Korean Game Company Nexon Grows in Europe

Friday, September 18, 2009

• A Look at Social Games from Japan
• Forget Those White-Label Games, Check Out LOLApps’ Diva Life
• Social Gaming Roundup: Playfish and Playdom Expand in SF, and more

As Facebook has grown around the world in the last couple of years, international developers have taken a deeper interest in building applications on its platform. We’ve already covered a big one out of Hong Kong, called 6 Waves, but there are many others. Most notably, we’ve recently discovered a company called 3happybytes out of Argentina — a country that has been seeing a boom in web technology recently.

The company’s suite of applications currently reaches 26.7 million monthly active users, making it the fifth largest Facebook developer by portfolio-summed MAUs, according to our AppData analytics service. Certainly, as with every other developer on the list, some users have installed more than one app made by the company, so its monthly unique visitors is likely lower.

The company was founded earlier this year by Walter Souto, Javier Pelitz, and Fabian Muller. However, its web site only lists an email address.

So, what sort of apps does the company make? Very simple ones, from what we’ve seen. We’ve just started tracking the company, so our historical data is limited. Still, three of the company’s apps are among the fastest growing on the Facebook Platform. One, Friend of the Day, has quickly surged to nearly six million MAUs over the last few days. You simply install the app and it automatically tells you who your top friend is that day — it apparently decides from among your friends at random. Another app, Enemy of the Day, is basically the same concept. Install the app and find out who the company has randomly decided is your top enemy. It has grown from 5.67 million three days ago to 6.56 million today.

A third is called Death’s Time. It rather humorously randomly decides on a date and manner of death for you. Personally, it predicts that I will die on April 18, 2024, at 10:23 am. The cause of my death? “Motorcycle accident while dressed as Elvis.” Sounds plausible. Other people seem to be amused, too. It has grown from 9.9 million MAUs three days ago to 10.9 million today.

For all of these apps, and presumably the five others, you are asked to post the results — your top friend, your top enemy, your cause of death — on your wall, as well as on the wall of your friend or enemy. The simple, sensationalistic nature of these apps, combined with the ease of sharing your activities in them with your friends, appears to be driving the company’s growth.

Certainly, these apps are not as elegant as some of the games or utilities coming out on the platform today. They are more reminiscent of the early days, years ago, when nearly every developer was making simple, spammy apps. Still, perhaps the company can convert all of these users into something more sustainable. For now, it appears to be making money from a wide variety of remnant ad networks, quizzes, and your usual low-grade stuff. Perhaps, one day, it will grow into a more complex gaming company and start doing what many others already are — offering virtual goods that people are willing to pay for.

It’s that time of year again. No, I don’t mean the onset of autumn, nor Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday coming up next week. It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day this Saturday, September 19 — an odd meme from the 1990’s that has found millions of new fans this decade through the internet. If you want to read Facebook in Pirate English, here’s how.

Facebook has translated its site into Pirate English. Last year, you were able to access the dialect within the normal language chooser available in your account settings. But Pirate English doesn’t appear to be on the list at this point (although maybe Facebook will make it available on Saturday?). For now, if you want to read Pirate, follow this link to Facebook’s ajax language-picker page.

“English (Pirate)” is visible as one of the English dialect options, along with US, UK and “Upside Down” English. Just pick the pirate option and you’ll see Facebook’s masterful site translation go into effect.

This is a very small update, but shows how Facebook is trying to make itself a more central part of people’s lives. You can now log in to the site by entering your username and password instead of your email address and password like before.

Sure, many other sites let you do this. But the more interesting part is that Facebook has been promoting usernames for months, having let people get usernames in vanity URLs earlier this year. For example, my personal profile is now at www.facebook.com/EricEldon. Now, I can log in as EricEldon. The significance, or what there is of it, is that Facebook wants you thinking about using the site on its terms, rather than, say, in terms of the Gmail or Yahoo account you’ve been logging in through in the past.

The past two days, we’ve seen a wide variety of companies presenting at TechCrunch50 somehow make use of Facebook — some built apps or used Pages, some accessed profile data, the news stream or photos through Connect. Here’s a quick review of what we saw, in chronological order, including links to other sites that have covered the companies in more detail.

SealTale: This doesn’t seem like a new idea. SealTale lets you place an endorsement widget on a web page, including a simple frame on Facebook. More on CNET.

Udorse: An endorsement site where people can endorse items in their Facebook photos, potentially convincing friends to buy them as well. More on TechCrunch.

Refmob: Cross-site service where people can get paid for referring their friends to jobs; includes a way to refer Facebook friends. More on VentureBeat.

Mota Motors: Used car marketplace site that accesses Connect to let buyers and sellers include their real Facebook profile photos. More on SocalTech.

YourVersion: News discovery engine site that lets you share stories on Facebook. More on TechCrunch.

Metricly: Simple analytics service that includes a way to track fans on Facebook. More on VentureBeat.

Crowdflower: Online workforce placement service that apparently includes a Facebook app where you can earn virtual currencies in exchange (I don’t see the app). More on Caem.la.

Cododot: Event-planning and invitation service focused on women. It lets you post invitations to Facebook. More on Techgeist.

Threadsy: Social stream aggregator site that lets you read information from Facebook along with other social sites. More on CNET.

Radiusly: Imagined as a sort of Twitter-LinkedIn hybrid, the company also lets you post items to Facebook. More on VentureBeat.

[Photo via Noah Hendrix.]