Facebook is evolving into a website that offers just about anything a web surfer would want to do. Watching TV shows, reading personalized news, and listening to music can all be done from within Facebook, Facebook also has a commanding presence in the gaming industry. It was a major player in the rise of “casual gaming”, and big publishers such as EA have invested a lot in its social gaming projects. Even though it’s in a position of dominance, Facebook will not take the extra step and start developing its own games.

I’ve been seeing quite a few people on my Facebook News Feed talking about Words With Friends lately. Words With Friends is certainly nothing new, but it has been growing in popularity amongst my non-gaming Facebook friends. It’s such a coincidence that Zynga is bringing Words With Friends to Facebook very soon.

The Simpsons will make its social network gaming debut this September on Facebook. According to MCV, Electronic Arts is responsible for publishing the game and Playfish is attached as the developer. EA purchased Playfish in 2009 for $300 million in cash and stock.

Uncharted 2 contained a feature that sent out tweets whenever you completed a chapter. This lead to far too many updates and some users became annoyed with this attempt to utilize social networks in games. With Uncharted 3, Naughty Dog is using Facebook and YouTube to connect players without ever leaving the game.

PopCap is expanding its influence around the world. The casual game developer announced it is bringing a new social game service called Pop Tower to Japan. PopCap will be teaming with Taito Corporation. You may know Taito as the developers of Space Invaders from the late 1970s. The company has been a property of Square Enix since 2005.

We are not smurfin’ you. Capcom will be releasing a Smurfs game with social networking capabilities. Smurfs’ Village will be released in November for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Perfect World Entertainment, creator of the Perfect World MMORPG, has announced the roll out of a new social networking platform called CORE Connect.

The new platform’s goal is to connect players from across the vast Perfect World gaming world together with a set of new set social networking tools.

It seems we can’t go one week without hearing something new about the Dead Rising franchise. Dead Rising 2 was released last week and Dead Rising 2: Case West was announced just before that. Now it’s the iPhone’s turn to get in on the madness. Capcom is bringing Dead Rising to the iPhone and iPod Touch in time for the holiday season.

Disney isn’t wasting any time making use of its newly acquired property. Disney purchased Playdom last month for $563 million but will pay an additional $200 million based on Playdom’s future financial success. Playdom is currently starting its first project based in the Marvel Universe which is considered to be a social game.

For those of you who remember the Gaia Online announcements from Boston Anime 2008 in March and zOMG! closed-beta announcement in July 2008.

I was tickled pink to take a personal tour of the upcoming zOMG! MMO game with senior producer and director of zOMG!, Dave Georgeson. The game looks amazing. Don’t let those little saucer-eyed marshmallow puffs of cuteness fool you. From the preview demonstration Georgeson and his team gave, its nothing I’d wanna hug or hang around with but its a world I can’t wait to explore.

If you think Gaia Online is amazing, you will be more than pleased with their newest game scheduled for the end of Summer 2008…