1. CastleVille Beats CityVille as Zynga's Fastest Growing Facebook Game

Zynga said that CastleVille broke 5 million daily active users over the weekend, putting it ahead of CityVille's record for 3.2 million DAU in six days to make CastleVille the fastest-growing Zynga game of all time.

Note that these figures do not yet exactly align with those reported by Facebook. It is possible that Facebook is a day or two behind in updating traffic numbers, as happens from time to time.

Even with the discrepancy in reported numbers, the following AppData chart of Zynga games'launch week traffic supports the claim that CastleVille is the fastest-growing Zynga game to date in terms of first-week growth.

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2. Disney, Playdom Look to Former OnLive Exec as Head of Social Games

Disney has hired away OnLive executive John Spinale to be the new head of the Disney Interactive Media Group's social games business.

Spinale will run the social game business, which includes Disney's Playdom division, and report to John Pleasants, co-president of Disney's game division. Spinale will be based in Disney's Palo Alto, Calif. office.

Spinale will assume strategic and day-to-day management responsibilities at Playdom that were previously handled by Pleasants, who was chief executive of Playdom before Disney acquired it for $763.2 million in July of last year.

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