appdata Archives – We're Fusible

Cityville app is oh-so-close to 100 million monthly active users (Domain bought for only $38,000)

Cityville, the popular social game developed by Zynga, is very close to reaching 100 million monthly active users.

According to the latest stats from application trends and metrics tracker Appdata, Cityville has reached 98,798,539 monthly active users and is set to be the first game in history to hit 100 million users, within the next week.

Cityville, like many of Zynga’s social games, has experienced a quick rise to the top.

It quickly hit 6 million online users within 8 days of going online.

The domain name Cityville.com, which Zynga owns and re-directs to its Facebook application page, was purchased for a mere $38,225 at Moniker less than a year ago.

Although Cityville and Zynga have made a lot of headlines, the company did recently acquire Rewardville.com for a somewhat bargain price of $4,500.

But after the historic success of Cityville and other games, Zynga may have a hard time acquiring “ville” domains at these prices on the aftermarket.

At least with people and companies a little more familiar with domain names and the possible mystery buyer behind the offer.

Elliot’s Blog, Fusible, get credit from AOL’s Games.com for breaking, then confirming Zynga Rewardville story

The bigger technology sites and mainstream blogs often take credit for breaking news stories, even though some of those news stories are on occasion reported by bloggers first.

That’s not the case with a recent breaking story that appeared on Domaining.com yesterday, in which Elliot Silver asked whether Zynga bought the domain name Rewardville.com.

It seems that AOL’s blog over at Games.com is giving credit to Elliot’s Blog and the blog here at Fusible for breaking, then confirming the rumor that Zynga has plans for Rewardville.

After reading Elliot’s story, in which he noted the domain was marked private and re-directed to rewards.zynga.com, I did some research and discovered that in fact, Zynga Inc. had filed for a European trademark back in December 2010 on the word “Rewardville”.

Alexander Armero, the Games.com blogger that wrote the story titled, “RewardVille: Zynga plans a mysterious rewards program”, had this to say:

Hot on the heels of CityVille, Zynga may already be planning another release: RewardVille. Today, Fusible confirmed rumors that Zynga has big plans for this mysterious reward program.

The speculation about RewardVille solidified into fact when it was discovered that Zynga had actually filed a trademark for RewardVille back in mid December. Not only that, but they paid $4,500 for the website: rewardville.com. Would you pay that much for a website you didn’t plan on using? I think we can definitely expect to hear a lot more about RewardVille in the future.

Alexander speculates that Rewardville could be used for a new Zynga Lotto, or maybe a new game entirely. Whatever the case, at the time of this story, Rewardville.com now resolves to a GoDaddy.com parked page.

AOL Games.com

If you’re a fan of Zynga, you should check out the blog over at Games.com. The writers at Games.com do some of the best coverage on Zynga’s social gaming properties, including Cityville.

Cityville.com sold for $38,000 in 2010 and is now Facebook’s most popular game of all-time.

According to AppData, Cityville is expected to top over 100 million monthly active users by the end of this week.