Draw Something sheds millions of users, figures suggest

Players must guess words based on friends' drawings created using touchscreens

Less than two months after it was sold for $200m (£123m), mobile game Draw Something may be suffering a large dip in users, figures have suggested.

Data gathered by WebMediaBrands indicated a dip of almost five million daily users in the past month.

Monthly users are also beginning to drop after a huge spike in April.

The game's developer OMGPOP, which had recently faced bankruptcy, was purchased by social gaming giant Zynga last month.

WebMediaBrands monitors Facebook usage data relating to mobile applications.

Draw Something, like many mobile games, gives users the chance to sign in to the game using their Facebook account in order to make it easier to find friends on the service.

While not all users access the game this way, it represents a significant portion of the app's total userbase.

The data showed that between 2 April and 2 May, the daily active user count went from approximately 14.3 million people to 10.4 million.

Zynga was not immediately available for comment on the reports.

'Fastest selling'

Casual users - those who play at least once a month - have been more stable, although those figures are beginning to show signs of steady decline.

The title had been downloaded over 50 million times in just 50 days. Zynga said those figures made it the "fastest selling" mobile game of all time.

More than six billion drawings have been created so far, with an estimated 3,000 more being added per second.

Ben Griffin, from <link> <caption>Know Your Mobile</caption> <url href="http://www.knowyourmobile.com" platform="highweb"/> </link> , said he was not surprised by the drop in users, and that Zynga must work on reinventing the game's appeal.

"It's a great game for the first hour or two," he told the BBC. "But then you get inundated with all the requests, and it becomes more of a chore. It's short-lived fun - once the novelty expires that's it really."

If Draw Something is to have longevity, he said, it will need to emulate the likes of Angry Birds.

"I think the reinvention of Angry Birds has kept it number one. Rovio's really worked hard to keep it fresh in the minds.

"Draw Something's still new - it might come out with some new fresh features. The question is what can they really do with it."

In November last year Zynga - which owns many popular social games such as Farmville - made its initial pubic offering, only for its stock price to fall 5% on its market debut.