Online Games, Farmville | featured news

How time-wasting video games escaped the arcade, jumped into our pockets and took over our lives.

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.”

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.