City-Building Sims, Pirates Ahoy Charge Into Fastest-Growing Facebook Games

[Every other week, we'll examine the fastest growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network.] Though Lyore Network's QuizBone doesn't seem to really qualify as a game, the quiz-making title was still the fastest growing app listed in Facebook's "Games" category, doubling its audience to 2.9 million after gaining 1.5 million new users in the last week. QuizBone managed to overtake Zynga's FrontierVille, which held that #1 spot almost every week since its launch in June. The pioneering sim grew by 6 percent and now has 21.9 million players, 1.1 million of which just started playing within the past seven days. At #3, Watercooler's Kingdoms of Camelot grew its userbase as it added 970,122 new players, now up to a total of 4 million. The kingdom-building simulator spent the past month below 3 million users but experienced a 32 percent surge for its audience recently. Playdom's offbeat game Fanglies (#4), which launched earlier this month, more than tripled its total to 1.1 million users after attracting 838,583 new players. Apparently, gamers have taken to the idea of a city-building sim starring cartoonish vampires! Playfish/Electronic Arts' Pirates Ahoy, another early July release, shot up to #5 and enjoyed a 1,425 percent growth this week, picking up 796,939 new swashbucklers and expanding its total crew to 852,846 players. The new title invites players to sail with their friends and search for treasures. ZipZapPlay's Baking Life hasn't budged from its #6 spot since our last tally, bringing in 787,344 (+23 percent) new users for a total of 4.3 milion. Metrogames' clothing store management game Fashion World climbed up to #7, with 779,802 new shoppers joining for a total of 3.1 million. Two more non-games, Windows Live Messenger and Entrevista tus Amigos, popped up on our list of Facebook's fastest growing games at #8 and #9 respectively. Popcap Games Bejeweled Blitz continues to grow on the social network, as 733,654 new gem-matchers (+7 percent) helped bring its total audience size up to 11.5 million. The full list of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts are as follows: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.