According to their site’s Press Room, Facebook has more than 400 million active users spending over 500 billion minutes per month on it. Wondering how they are spending that much time? Well, as of June 2010, there is a total of 70 million players of Facebook’s top application, Farmville and nearly 30 million playing top 2 app Texas Holdem. And that’s just for the top two games.

Phenomenal? Yeah. In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons why millions are hooked to Facebook: its apps. Why? Well, for one, most of the games don’t have time limit. Farmville, for example, does not need you to constantly keep track of it. You just have to plant and wait for a few hours or days for the planted crops to grow. The same goes for Farmtown, Fishville, Happy Aquarium, etc. No need to stay logged-in and stare at the computer ‘til the wee hours.

Another reason is the applications’ ability to publish, share, and interact with other gamers within and beyond your friends list. Games like Petville, Mafia Wars, Café World, and the likes allow players to publish their game status or ask help from friends to provide what they need for certain tasks. Other games like Uno, Plock, and Tetris allow players to compete or play with other people outside their friends list. This adds up to the interaction of the players to the game and to other players. This also encourages both competition (who gets a better score) and a sense of camaraderie (like sharing and helping a friend with a goal) as well.

Facebook games also link up to the latest games from top game software development companies. You may find their classic games on Facebook, too. Most are just trial versions but you have the same old look and feel, or give you a preview of their new games.

Finally, we have to factor in the nature of casual games themselves. The most popular games are not only highly interactive, they also cut across age groups and social and ethnic boundaries. One of my friends said that her contact list ballooned to almost a thousand, with many exotic names that she could hardly pronounce when she played Mob Wars. She said she had friends from all the continents except Antartica!

Despite internal controls to stop spamming (i.e., no more app notifications), the number of Facebook app users continues to rise. There are still over 300 million Facebook gamers at present. Since casual gaming overwhelmed the social networking platforms in 2009, it hasn’t let up. In fact, IT business analysts predict that it will contribute over 800 million dollars to the US virtual goods market for 2010 alone.