Oh, and the game wouldn’t be complete without the fail whale. When you’re tired of shooting down birds, you can shoot the “Fail Whale” to kill all the birds on the screen. Tweet Hunt is available in two versions: Celebirdies ($.99) and Classic (free).

Who’s excited?

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Blog #26 of 365.

RewardVille will work like this:  Each time you play a participating Zynga game, you’ll earn Zynga Points (zPoints) and increase your Zynga Level (zLevel). At every zLevel, you’ll earn Zynga Coins (zCoins) to use on free, exclusive in-game items in RewardVille.

The rewards program is in beta and will roll-out to a small group of users.

When looking at the top 25 Facebook Games, Zynga games fill up the top 7, with CityVille leading the way with over 80 million monthly active users. I imagine that the rewards game will likely keep Zynga at the top of this list and encourage more users to play other Zynga games in order to get more rewards / gain levels.

What do you think about RewardVille? Are you playing any Facebook games?

Blog #19 of 365.

A few weeks ago, Farmers Insurance kicked off a promotion on FarmVille that offered players 10 days of wither protection for free in return for displaying the Farmers Insurance blimp on their farm. For those that don’t play the game, when you plant a crop in FarmVille, you must harvest it within a certain amount of time or it will wither. By placing the Farmers Insurance blimp on your farm, it protects your crops from withering.

Last month, McDonald’s also launched a promotion on FarmVille. Players could visit McDonald’s farm to help with certain “farming” tasks. As a reward for helping, players received two free exclusive items to use on their farm: a McDonald’s I’m Lovin’ It hot air balloon and a McCafe coffee cup (which makes your farmer work 2x the speed when working on farming tasks).

I thought both branded integrations were well done and fit perfectly within the application. They weren’t too distracting and gave the option for the player to participate or not. I predict that we will see more of these type of integrations within social games, particularly the more popular ones like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, etc. However, I’m just not sure how gamers will react to more and more branded advertisements within their games.

What are your thoughts on brands integrating deeper within social games?

According to the game, you: “Build your own University and recruit the best athletes to challenge your rivals! Construct everything from Dorms & Classrooms to huge Sports Stadiums! Will you be revered for creating the best University, or will you be crushed by the competition?”

At first glance I thought it would be more sports focused, but it’s really more of a strategy game than a sports game. You can, however, play the role of Athletic Director by recruiting fictional star athletes to build a top sports program ready to battle against other College Town teams.

These types of “build a virtual city, town, farm, etc.” social games are very popular on Facebook. It will be interesting to see how the ESPN branding of the game helps with the growth and popularity. The College Town game launched this week and already has over 100,000 users.

With Facebook’s recent announcement that over 200 million people are playing social games, I anticipate developers building / releasing more games and partnering with more brands, like an ESPN. According to Nielsen, social games are projected to be a one billion dollar industry by 2011.

Are you a social gamer? What do you think of ESPN’s College Town game? Would you play it?

The app is simple to use, just upload an image and you will receive an entire album of your transformation into your new profession. You can choose what photos are included in your album and even edit captions for the photos. Below is my photo album that highlights my transformation into a rodeo clown.

Uploading your photo within an app is not a new concept, but I like how this app creates a photo album with multiple photos. It’s more inviting for others to view the album and read the story associated with the photos. The Stride Gum Facebook Page has just under 1 million fans and just over 13,000 people have “Liked” the Change Your Flavor app. It will be interesting to see how many fans will use the app. Stride is, however, encouraging fans to upload a picture from the app to their wall for a chance to be featured within their profile pic.

What do you think of this app?

However, those users that don’t play games on Facebook tend to have a negative reaction to the notifications that show up in their news feeds. Facebook has recognized this and they want to have as few people as possible have a negative experience while using the social network.

The biggest change is that Facebook is altering how the news feed will work, so that users who don’t play games will no longer see news feed application stories from those friends who do play games (like FarmVille, etc.).

In addition, Facebook will be introducing a new news feed story about games. For example, let’s say  4 or 5 of your Facebook friends start playing Madden Superstars, you would see a story within your news feed listing your 4 friends have started playing Madden Superstars. This will help in decreasing the clutter of your news feed (if you don’t play games), but still let’s you know if you’re friends are playing certain games.

Invites and other application requests will move from the right-hand column of the home page and appear as a line within the left-hand navigation column (See screenshot below). Facebook will also be automatically bookmarking apps that you use, sorting them based on your usage in the last 30 days. This will be a nice update for those who play games and often have a hard time pulling them up when they log-in to Facebook.

What do you think of these updates to games? If you don’t play Facebook games, are they helpful?

Below is the replay of the event, complete with all the announcements:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been a player of the game (I would be ashamed though if I was this guy). I think most Facebook users have either a love or hate relationship with the farming application. And there are some that experiment and just quit. Regardless of what you think of the game, the stats are impressive. Millions of users are spending countless hours playing the game and spending money on “virtual goods” for their farm. Sources claim that FarmVille maker, Zynga, is doing well over $1 million in revenue a day! It’s a model that other developers are scrambling to duplicate, for obvious reasons.

Below are the top 25 Facebook Games for the month of August, with Zynga dominating the top 7. Do you play any of these games? Which are your favorite?

Facebook has been aggressively meeting with developers to try to get them to use their virtual currency. Facebook has CrowdStar, LOLapps and RockYou using Credits exclusively in their games. Zynga, the creator of the most popular social game, FarmVille, has been more selective in terms of the applications that offer Credits as payment. Facebook has even pushed Credits to the mobile space with MyTown.

Have you noticed this message for free Credits on Facebook? Do you play any games that use Facebook Credits? If you’re not playing games on Facebook, would you use these Credits to experiment with social games?

The app works just like FarmVille: plant, grow, harvest, and sell your crops. There are several different types of marijuana plants you can grow, but each plant has a unique level of “Protection.” Since growing pot is illegal, you have to watch out for “Ranger Dick” who can confiscate your plants. The social features of the game are similar to other “farming” apps – you’ve got options to add neighbors, send and receive gifts, etc.

The Pot Farm app has received some significant buzz within Facebook and has almost 1 million active users. I have to admit, I was shocked that the app hasn’t been shut down, but the following disclaimer is present throughout the app:

THIS GAME CONTAINS IMMATURE SUBJECT MATTER AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR ANYONE UNDER AGE 21. ALL PLANTS AND SITUATIONS DEPICTED ARE ENTIRELY FICTIONAL AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL LIFE SITUATIONS OR PLANTS IS COMPLETELY COINCIDENTAL. THIS GAME SHOULD NOT BE PLAYED BY ANYONE.

If you want to see more of the app without having to install it (and potentially freaking out your friends & coworkers), check out the video below.