The Facebook Application Platform

Transcription

The
Facebook
Application
Platform
An O’Reilly Radar Report
By Tim O’Reilly and the O’Reilly Radar Team
with Niall Kennedy and Dave McClure
2007
November, 2nd Edition
Contents
The Facebook Application Platform........................................1
Social networking invitation etiquette...................................2
What’s pixel share?.........................................................................2
Widgets: From Apple to Facebook...........................................4
Making money on Facebook......................................................6
Not just the platform.....................................................................7
Quantifying the Facebook application ecosystem.............8
Measuring Facebook.....................................................................8
Notes on the data...........................................................................8
How many Facebook applications are there?......................9
What are the most popular Facebook applications,
measured by number installed?............................................ 10
Which Facebook applications have
the most active users?............................................................... 11
Who are the most popular suppliers of
Facebook applications?............................................................. 12
Which categories of applications have
the most active users?............................................................... 13
Has the long tail come to Facebook already?................... 15
Best practices of Facebook application marketing......... 16
The top 200 Facebook applications...................................... 18
The social networking operating system? Not yet.......... 20
Company profile: iLike............................................................... 23
Company profile: Slide.............................................................. 26
Conclusion..................................................................................... 27
O’Reilly Radar Open Source Report 2007
©2007 O’Reilly Media, Inc. O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 70662
The Facebook
Application Platform
by Tim O’Reilly and the O’Reilly Radar Team, with Niall Kennedy and Dave McClure
W
eb 2.0 is getting crowded with me-too
sites that have little chance of rising
above the noise. Web 2.0 information
site Techcrunch even features a “deadpool,” the obituary page for startups that didn’t make the
cut. The site’s Michael Arrington privately estimates that
many more of the 750-odd startups he’s written about
“just faded away.” What’s an entrepreneur to do? Hang on
to the coattails of the winners, who are turning their
offerings from applications into platforms.
These new applications-turned-platforms include the
Firefox Web browser, which has given birth to an ecosystem of more than 2,500 plug-ins. It includes Web-native
applications such as Yahoo!, Google, PageFlakes, and
Netvibes, and most recently, social networking juggernauts MySpace and Facebook. These new platforms
provide mechanisms for integrating information into
user desktops or other Web pages, and for integrating
web-based services into custom pages (such as MyYahoo!)
via small panels called widgets or gadgets, usually written
in JavaScript.
There are reasons to be skeptical of the widget economy, but we’ve already seen the first financial win in the
new platform ecosystems: StumbleUpon, which began
as a Firefox plug-in and developed into a substantial
website as well, was acquired by eBay for $75 million.
Widget businesses themselves may not be defensible,
but they are a quick, effective way to build data assets.
Think of a widget platform as a distribution channel, and
ask yourself whether an application that is just go-italone on the Web is more valuable than one that shows
1 : O’Reilly Radar Open Source Report 2007
up in multiple places. The value is still in the assets that
the application collects and gathers, but inasmuch as the
widget instance is just a tentacle back to the home
application, there’s the possibility of significant value
there. But the value of the business needs to be in the
application itself (and its own stickiness), and not just in
the usage on a particular widget platform.
This report examines the Facebook platform.
Facebook is the fastest-growing widget platform, but it’s
not the only one. In late August, top widget maker Slide
announced that “users are adding one million new Flash
widgets daily across all non-Facebook social networks.”
According to Comscore, Slide’s widgets are encountered
by 134 million unique viewers per month. In late
September, Amazon announced a widget program.
Yet the boldest platform play to date certainly comes
from social networking site Facebook. Founded in
February 2004 as an in-house service for Harvard
University students (no harvard.edu address, no admission), it quickly expanded to other Boston-area and Ivy
League colleges, and then to all colleges and universities.
By September 2006, it was available to pretty much
anyone with an email address. Its success since then has
been swift and impressive. It’s the most popular photosharing site on the Web and it is widely reported as
being in the Top Six or Top Seven of all websites in terms
of overall traffic. The site is free, has taken in minimal
outside investment (although at presstime a major deal
with Microsoft based on a borderline-absurd valuation of
the company was reported to be under discussion), and,
so far, Facebook is funded almost entirely by advertising.
Social networking invitation etiquette
I remember when people first started using email, and
there was a flurry of publications on “netiquette,” the
etiquette of how to use email. Social networking is at
that stage now. There’s been a lot written about the
potential for future embarrassment from photos or
videos published on Facebook or MySpace, but I am
focused on a humbler bit of social networking etiquette: the proper use of invitations.
Someone who is well known receives hundreds if not
thousands of invitations from strangers, to every social
network under the sun. Most of these, relying solely on
the boilerplate invitation text, go right into the trash.
“I’d like to add you to my professional network on
LinkedIn.” Sure. Who are you? What do you do? Why
should I care? (Even if I’ve met you, I might need my
mind jogged, especially if you might have the same
name as other people I know.)
Here are two invitations I’ve accepted recently from
people who I don’t know, but who explained nicely in
their invitation why they were trying to connect.
As an example of how overheated the Facebook hype
has become, a 2006 “study” found that Facebook was the
second most “in” activity on college campuses, tied with
beer and sex. Only the iPod fared better. Draw your own
conclusions about that. And it’s mainstream now: more
than half of Facebook users do not currently attend
college—and on average they spend more than 20
minutes a day on the site. It’s so popular now that many
(perhaps even you) are concerned that their inboxes are
overflowing with “friend” requests, often from people
they haven’t heard from in years or decades.
When Facebook launched its application platform on
May 24, it made a big bet that a relatively open platform
strategy that provided a revenue share to developers
would help it take over leadership of the social networking space. In contrast with current market leader
MySpace, which permits third party applications but
provides few mechanisms for monetization, Facebook
introduced an innovative “pixel share” revenue model.
What’s pixel share?
Pixel share means that, rather than having a revenue
split with application developers, which would require
Facebook to insert itself as a middleman into application
ad sales, Facebook simply reserves a portion of a page,
referred to as the Canvas Page, for its own advertising,
while developers can do anything they want on the
remainder of the page, retaining 100% of the revenue
they generate in their space.
Think about an invitation like you would an email or a
phone call. Who are you trying to reach? What do you
want from them? Why should they care to respond? If
you can’t practice that elementary courtesy, don’t
bother to ask.
Pixel share is a big win for very popular applications,
especially those, like Slide or iLike, that have substantial
targeted user bases outside of Facebook, and thus have
their own advertiser relationships. It is, of course, less of
a win for smaller applications—which makes us believe
that Facebook will ultimately introduce an ad network
of its own, providing advertising services to the long
tail of applications, much as Google AdSense for
Content provides it for the long tail of searchable web
pages. Expect to hear about Facebook hiring people
with ad targeting experience.
Unlike the News Corp.-owned MySpace, Facebook has
also opened much of its core functionality to developers,
such that developers can even create features that
compete with Facebook’s own offerings. What’s more,
Facebook has developed innovative methods, including
the once-controversial Mini-Feed, for viral marketing to
the 40 million plus Facebook users. More than 80 percent
of them have tried at least one application.
The response to Facebook opening its platform was
immediate and enthusiastic, with Silicon Valley venture
capitalists and entrepreneurs buzzing about new
Facebook applications installed by millions of users
within days of being released. Web companies such as
TripAdvisor and Mozes are acquiring Facebook applications to speed time to market; Netflix learned of a popular independently created application and granted
additional rights to its data. In this report, we seek to
explore and, based on the data available at this early
date, quantify the resulting phenomenon.
In the first four months after Facebook launched its
platform, more than 4,000 applications were added to
the service. As of late October, it’s now past 6,000. More
than 19 million have loaded the most popular application, Slide’s Top Friends. Together, those applications are
responsible for more than 30 million pageviews per day,
more than 2 percent of all Facebook pageviews.
Viral mechanisms within Facebook let users discover
and adopt applications they find interesting. For example, the music sharing site iLike took six months to sign
up its first million users to its Web-based service. On
Facebook, iLike signed up a million users in its first week
and is now the fourth-ranked application. At a recent
Facebook developer conference, a t-shirt-clad Ali Partovi,
iLike Co-Founder and CEO, half-jokingly referred to iLike’s
Web presence as its “legacy product.” Not every application can expect this type of success and Facebook is
starting to show a suspiciously dot-com-era case of
possible overvaluation, but early examples show that,
with the right application and clever use of Facebook’s
viral mechanisms (see “Best Practices of Facebook
Marketing,” page 17), the Facebook user base presents a
great opportunity.
It’s particularly interesting to us that the majority of
the applications are still being supplied by individual
Facebook users, identified on the service by names,
rather than by companies. Although, to be precise, some
companies, among them Yahoo!, are deploying their
applications as if they were written by individuals. We
expect more companies to follow Slide and iLike’s lead,
and begin porting their Web applications to the
Facebook platform. We also expect social networking
market leader MySpace to follow Facebook’s lead and
provide a more open version of their platform—even if
this forces a change in MySpace’s business model.
Widgets: From Apple to Facebook
Widgets section by Niall Kennedy
Facebook applications are a case of a much broader class
of mini-applications that are often referred to as widgets.
Andy Hertzfeld is generally credited with kicking off the
widget phenomenon with the original Apple Macintosh
(see http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Desk_
Ornaments.txt). Hertzfeld’s team created Desk
Ornaments, later renamed Desk Accessories, to accomplish small tasks that did not warrant a full-blown
application.
Plug-ins and skins for the music player Winamp reignited the customization and miniature application
trend, and inspired what we now consider widgets.
See http://www.konfabulator.com/cartoon/partOne.html for a cartoon history
of Konfabulator by Arlo Rose.
Arlo Rose created an application called Kaleidoscope
(see http://www.kaleidoscope.net/What_is_Kaleidoscope.
html ) to customize Mac UI elements and later introduced
Konfabulator widgets. Konfabulator was a tool that permitted the development of widgets that could be displayed
on the Mac desktop. Konfabulator’s functionality was
imitated by the Mac’s Dashboard widget platform. In
November 2004, Konfabulator was released in a crossplatform version, and in 2005, its parent company was
acquired by Yahoo!, which saw widgets as a strategic way
to gain desktop real estate for web information products.
Yahoo! briefly renamed the product the Yahoo! Widget
Engine, but after a developer uprising, returned to the
Konfabulator name. There are now more than 4,000
Konfabulator widgets available.
A team of three developers created Start.com in
February 2005 as a side-project at Microsoft. The site
eventually grew into Live.com and became the center of
Microsoft’s Windows Live collection of Web services. This
team worked under Hadi Partovi and some followed him
to iLike. In April 2005, Apple OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the
first operating system to feature widgets heavily, with
their own spot on the default dock bar.
The breakthrough moment for widgets on the web,
however, was on August 21, 2005, when YouTube
launched its HTML embed code for video. Suddenly,
embedded Web content was viral, and widgets were the
means by which that content was distributed.
In June 2006 Adobe released the Flash 9 Player. The
new player contained features specifically requested by
MySpace for its widget platform. Within weeks, MySpace
required Flash 9 for all widget content, causing a major
web tool upgrade. (For more detail, see http://www.
niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/07/myspaceupgrade.html )
Google created the first widget Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) to help Windows developers create content for Google Desktop. Microsoft and
Apple have since introduced their own IDEs: Expression
Web and Dashcode, respectively. Google was the first
company to offer free widget hosting, and the company
has also released Google Maps as YouTube-style embeddable widgets. Adobe’s $100 million investment fund is
the first widget venture initiative. It was created to fuel
AIR, Adobe’s Rich Internet Application architecture.
Google also invests in successful widgets on its platform—and Facebook itself has recently opened a $10
million application-specific investment fund.
Web widgets are typically written in JavaScript, and
are often very thin “skins” on a web services API (and, as
such, they have the same security vulnerabilities as
JavaScript). For platform vendors, widget platforms
provide several benefits:
Increased user satisfaction and stickiness provided by
user customization
■
Additional visibility (and viral marketing) for platform
services either on the desktop or on other web sites
■
For developers, the benefits have been less apparent.
Until recently, widgets were primarily a marketplace for
amateurs who built tiny applications just for fun or
personal utility. As is so often the case in new markets,
barriers to entry were low, and as a result, innovation
thrived away from the pressures of revenue
expectations.
At first, widgets were used primarily for data display.
However, as they began to provide more complex functions, user registration, preferences, and other data
began to flow the other way. And as we’ve learned on
the Web itself, in the Web 2.0 era, this data is the foundation for company value. A Web 2.0 application harnesses
network effects to build data assets such that the application gets better the more people use it. Widgets, which
at least in theory can be syndicated across multiple
websites and Web platforms, provide an unprecedented
opportunity for viral distribution and the acquisition of
large, connected user bases. And of course, social networks have proven in a short time to be among the most
viral of Web platforms, at least so far. These data assets
will prove valuable in many ways. In the short term, as on
the external Web, advertising is the first and—for now—
the most powerful revenue source.
Making money on Facebook
Facebook’s Canvas Page is an application’s primary
vehicle for monetization. Facebook retains the right to
place advertising on particular parts of the page; the
rest can be used by the application developer for any
purpose, including advertising. For now, at least,
Facebook is not hogging the best spots on the page.
Facebook’s “pixel share” model is a radical simplification of the business relationship between online platform and application. It requires no tracking by
Facebook of application monetization, and no explicit
revenue share. Everyone wins: Facebook avoids a huge
amount of logistical and analytical overhead, developers have access to millions of users, and Facebook, as
aggregator, gets the pageviews.
Application developers we spoke to highlighted
Facebook’s support for application monetization as
one of the key differentiators of the Facebook platform.
MySpace has let third-party applications embed widgets, but because their terms of service prohibited anyone but MySpace itself from making money on the site,
applications such as YouTube that were widely
deployed by MySpace users were forced to drive traffic
back to their own sites in order to create any commercial benefit for themselves.
Of course, this “you sell your ads and I’ll sell mine”
approach primarily benefits developers such as Slide
and iLike that have advertising relationships in place
already, as well as the scale to successfully sell targeted
advertising. It is, we believe, inevitable that Facebook
will eventually also offer an AdSense-like model in
which they themselves place advertising on application pages. Facebook is widely reported to be working
on a targeted advertising program. The question is
whether that program will address advertising only on
Facebook’s pixel share of the page, or will be offered to
application developers as well. We believe that it will
ultimately be offered to application developers, allowing even long tail applications to take part in the
Facebook economy. Meanwhile, application developers
VideoEgg and RockYou are each trying to build their
own ad networks within Facebook.
It’s not just advertising. iLike receives affiliate commissions on music sales via Amazon and ticket sales via
TicketMaster. Meanwhile, ad networks, Amazon, and
Ticketmaster provide monetization services. Could
pay-to-access Facebook applications be next? Slide’s
Max Levchin points out that there is now an internal
economy in Facebook user attention, in which applications are selling users to each other on a “cost per
acquisition” basis. A successful Facebook application
can ask its users to try another Facebook application,
which will pay the first application for each user who
tries out the new one. Developers we have spoken to
estimate that costs per acquisition have ranged from
seven cents per user acquisition to as high as 50 cents,
with a consensus view emerging of a price of approximately 20 cents per user.
Levchin notes that this internal economy will only last
if external monetization of these applications is sufficient to justify the user acquisition cost. Now there’s a
race to gain as many users as possible—and to use
those users to acquire other users via Facebook’s viral
marketing mechanisms. The race is built, in part,
around fear for the future. There is Facebook burnout
(please, no more friend requests!), and already people
have been uninstalling applications. Each new application has more applications to fight for attention. That’s
part of why there is, as we will show later in this report,
a slowdown in the release of new applications.
Not just the platform...
The Social Graph and the News Feed are the Secret Sauce
The process of adding an application indicates just
how much of its own (and the user’s) data Facebook is
willing to expose. While there is user control over
whether or not personal data is passed on to the application provider, the default is that it is. In addition, the
application can appear not just on the Facebook user’s
profile page, but also in the Mini-Feed, a news feed that
has become increasingly important to Facebook users.
The platform and API provide a terrific (if relatively
simple and currently constrained) method of enabling
a wide variety of third-party applications. Installation
of Facebook applications is fairly simple, making it easy
for new users to adopt via point-and-click installs. In
this area, Facebook has not only beaten MySpace and
LinkedIn, but it’s also gotten ahead of Google, Yahoo,
AOL, and Microsoft. The only significant competitor
here is Amazon, with its very easy to use Web services
such as S3, and EC2.
The Social Graph is the fundamental map of social network connections for all individuals within Facebook.
While competing services also have this map, they
have as yet failed to do much with it. Neither have
Google, Yahoo, AOL, or Microsoft, all of which have
tremendous social graph assets due to their email,
instant messaging, and account systems. In Facebook,
the Social Graph enables the Feed. (At presstime, word
filtered out that Google does have a competing plan
underway.)
Many people are emphasizing the Facebook platform
and API as the critical success component, but they are
missing the other two pieces: the Social Graph and the
Facebook News Feed. Other social networking services
have the Social Graph connection information, but
Facebook is the only company thus far that has captured the viral distribution mechanism available in the
“social event stream,” that is, the Feed.
The Feed provides a virtual river of social events that
let people discover what everyone else is doing. The
Feed records what everyone is doing and makes the
information visible, while the Social Graph provides
the path and vectors of distribution for others to see
(and copy) what their friends are doing via the Feed.
Finally, the Facebook Platform and API enables simple
installation of a plethora of the third-party apps that
people discover their friends are using. The combination of these elements is why Facebook is so amazing.
—Dave McClure
Measuring Facebook
Notes on the data
Facebook is releasing more data in its developers area
about how its applications are being used, and there
are plenty of new services seeking to make sense of it.
Three we’re watching:
In late August, Facebook shifted from raw users to an
“engagement”-based approach in displaying application data. The application information now includes the
total number of active users and percent of all users
who were active the previous day. Here’s how Facebook
Application Platform head Dave Morin describes the
new statistics: “We want to make sure that you completely understand how we will be measuring engagement. We define engagement as the number of users
who touch your application every day (measured from
midnight to midnight each day). These touch points are
Canvas Page views, link clicks, mock-Ajax form submission, and click-to-play Flash. The number of engaged
users is calculated by putting all of these touch points
together. We display this as the number of Daily Active
Users. Next to it we also show what percentage that is
of the application’s total number of users.”
Appsaholic is a Facebook application that tracks
application installs and serves as an advertising
marketplace.
■ Adonomics (formerly known as “Appaholic,” with no
“s”) is a Web-based service that also tracks Facebook
application use and seeks to help developers monetize applications.
■ Socialistics is a Facebook application that lets individual users examine how they use Facebook and
present sundry visualizations for their use. It does for
Facebook use what Xobni aims to do for email use.
■
And, by the time this report is published, we suspect
there will be more worth following.
Quantifying the Facebook
application ecosystem
In the pages that follow, we provide detail on the
installed base of the top 200 Facebook applications and
their growth rates, as well as information on the top
developers (aggregate numbers for those who have
more than one application). We also provide profiles of
two of the most successful Facebook application developers, Slide and iLike, and pointers on how to increase
the virality of Facebook applications.
We captured user counts by application weekly, on
Sunday nights, starting 7/29/2007. The 9/2/2007 feed
included the new engagement-based data showing
active users. On 9/4/2007, we began collecting data
daily. We were able to infer an estimate of the total
user installs from the new data (estimate because the
percentage of installs is given as an integer). For historical and rate-of-change data and charts we use the
total installs, to assess the current state of Facebook
application we use the active user data. The data for
this updated report goes up to 10/28/2007.
The historical data only shows whether a user placed
an application on his or her Facebook page. Until the
most recent data feed, we had no application usage
data. There is no user grain data available, i.e., data
that shows how many users have installed what number of applications or what applications are installed or
used in tandem. Rough measures of install adoptions
are based on the number of installs divided by the total
estimate of Facebook users. The category data and
charts in the report reflect that an application can
appear in multiple categories. This means that any
totals by category are not additive: You can’t add up
the totals by category to get the total for Facebook as
some applications will be counted many times.
Facebook doesn’t ensure that applications have unique
names. We use the application and supplier name to
distinguish application with the same name. The name
of the application suppliers tend to change over time,
we always display the most recent supplier name we
have available.
—Roger Magoulas
How many Facebook applications are there?
The number of Facebook applications, counted weekly, has more than tripled
since the last week of July, the first week for which numbers are available. Starting
in late September, the white-hot increases in percentages began to slow down,
although the absolute number of new applications has remained in a small range.
Number of Facebook Applications
Date
App Count
Percentage Increase
from Previous Week
7/29/2007
2092
8/5/2007
2309
10%
8/12/2007
2504
8%
8/19/2007
2667
7%
8/26/2007
2887
8%
9/2/2007
3208
11%
9/9/2007
3892
21%
9/16/2007
4043
4%
9/23/2007
4358
8%
9/30/2007
4839
11%
10/7/2007
5235
8%
10/14/2007
5688
9%
10/21/2007
6228
9%
10/28/2007
6595
6%
App Counts:
different extraction methodoloy used after 9/4/07
What are the most popular
Facebook applications,
measured by number installed?
Application
Parent
Supplier
Review
Count
Active
Users
%
Active
ROC /
Week
Active
Share
Install
Share
User Installs
10/28/2007
Top Friends
Super Wall
Slide
2,874
2,855,031
RockYou!
1,564
1,309,719
15%
4%
6%
43%
19,597,850
10%
14%
3%
28%
12,561,864
Video
Facebook
1,697
1,137,132
FunWall
Slide
1,123
2,665,568
9%
6%
3%
27%
12,258,269
22%
14%
6%
27%
12,056,344
SuperPoke!
Slide
3,947
1,287,665
X Me
RockYou!
2,457
702,170
11%
9%
3%
27%
12,038,352
7%
8%
2%
24%
10,706,623
Likeness
RockYou!
2,060
iLike
iLike
3,895
590,543
6%
8%
1%
23%
10,380,927
677,562
7%
5%
2%
23%
10,321,798
Movies
Flixster
My Questions
Slide
1,693
716,009
7%
11%
2%
23%
10,302,751
1,205
515,449
5%
2%
1%
22%
9,795,203
Graffiti
Compare People
Mark Kantor
5,763
471,930
6%
2%
1%
18%
8,244,643
Chainn
8,323
364,483
5%
4%
1%
17%
7,783,516
Free Gifts
Zachary Allia
5,306
334,155
5%
2%
1%
16%
7,109,955
Causes
Blake Commagere
1,439
350,836
5%
9%
1%
15%
6,647,238
Moods
Drew Lustro
973
420,068
7%
4%
1%
14%
6,130,044
A guide to the charts on this page and the next
Reviews indicates the number of reviews, a measure of engagement.
Active User ROC: the average of the daily rates of change from 9/4/2007 until
10/28/2007. The count of active users drops during the weekend, serving to
reduce the ROC. Consider RockYou!’s Super Wall for what a viral increase in
active users looks like, even with less weekend usage.
Active Share: number of active users /Facebook user population
Install Share: number of installs /Facebook user population
Which Facebook applications
have the most active users?
Application
Vendor (display)
Review Count
% Active
Installs
Active User ROC
Active Share
Install Share
Active Users
10/28/2007
Top Friends
Slide
2,874
15%
FunWall
Slide
1,123
22%
19,597,850
8%
6%
43%
2,855,031
12,056,344
225%
6%
27%
2,665,568
Super Wall
RockYou!
1,564
SuperPoke!
Slide
3,947
10%
12,561,864
216%
3%
28%
1,309,719
11%
12,038,352
106%
3%
27%
1,287,665
Video
Facebook
Movies
Flixster
1,697
9%
12,258,269
52%
3%
27%
1,137,132
1,693
7%
10,302,751
54%
2%
23%
716,009
X Me
iLike
RockYou!
2,457
7%
10,706,623
51%
2%
24%
702,170
iLike
3,895
7%
10,321,798
8%
2%
23%
677,562
Likeness
RockYou!
2,060
6%
10,380,927
38%
1%
23%
590,543
My Questions
Slide
1,205
5%
9,795,203
-12%
1%
22%
515,449
Graffiti
Mark Kantor
5,763
6%
8,244,643
-18%
1%
18%
471,930
Moods
Drew Lustro
973
7%
6,130,044
42%
1%
14%
420,068
Quizzes
Eric Diep
1,526
8%
5,071,135
53%
1%
11%
418,838
Scrabulous
Rajat Agarwalla
4,435
33%
1,160,703
92%
1%
3%
382,911
Compare People
Chainn
8,323
5%
7,783,516
-23%
1%
17%
364,483
Whichever way you look at it, Slide is the big winner
here. It has three of the top five applications when measured by number of installs and three of the top four
when measured by number of active users. Its Top
Friends application is by far the most popular application
when measured either way. In our first report, My
Questions was #2 in installs and #10 in active users, the
fastest-growing of the top ten Facebook applications. It
has fallen to #10 in installs and stayed at #10 in active
users.
Who are the most popular suppliers
of Facebook applications?
Supplier
Installs
Avg % Active
Avg ROC
Active Users
Slide
64,118,426
6%
50%
7,642,159
RockYou!
47,378,379
4%
80%
2,882,076
Facebook
14,577,937
2%
36%
1,484,929
Blake Commagere
19,355,567
10%
59%
1,296,174
Flixster
10,302,751
7%
54%
716,009
iLike
10,321,798
7%
8%
677,562
Keith Schacht
5,669,071
8%
97%
553,718
11,422,707
4%
32%
550,302
Mark Kantor
8,260,643
3%
-18%
471,970
Eric Diep
7,303,080
4%
39%
459,183
Drew Lustro
6,159,158
5%
42%
420,650
Chainn
7,960,274
27%
-17%
391,649
Rajat Agarwalla
1,160,703
33%
92%
382,911
Watercooler
5,824,035
7%
86%
352,738
Zachary Allia
7,109,955
5%
-12%
334,155
Esgut
All data current as of the 10/28/2007 snapshot.
“Average ROC” is the average of the daily rate of change from
9/4/2007 to 10/28/2007
As you’d expect from the previous tables, Slide is by far
the most popular supplier. Its seven-million-plus active
users is more than double the nearest competitor,
RockYou!, although RockYou! has a higher growth ROC
during the study period. Especially worth noting here
(and in other charts) is the large number of top Facebook
applications credited to individuals rather than
companies.
Which categories of applications
have the most active users?
Average % Active by Category (10/28/07)
Gaming, Sports, and Messaging have the applications with
the highest average number of active users, by which we
mean the average application in each of these categories is
used by an average of more than 10 percent of the users
who have installed the applications. That’s a good measure
of users engagement with applications by category.
Facebook provides no aggregate adoption or usage
data by category. Our analysis provides that missing
dimension. Facebook is, however, rolling out more information for developers, as you can see at http://developers.
facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=34.
The Adoption rate chart below shows the most
popular categories. It is not a surprise that Dating dominates a site originally aimed at college students. What’s
interesting on the chart is that the Food and Drink and
Travel applications have significant adoption rates and
have applicability beyond the college crowd. With the
fast growing 25+ demographic, we expect the Business
and Money categories to gain more interest.
Average Adoption Rate by Category
The ever-growing total number of applications competing for the user’s attention affects the adoption rate.
Some of the trends we’ve seen:
Dating is an outlier that attracts relatively high usage,
but has few applications competing for users.
■
Just for Fun is a catchall category that includes by far
the most applications, including many popular ones.
However, the large number of applications brings the
average for the category down.
■
Chat and Messaging are both high usage categories
with many overlapping applications.
■
The Food & Drink and Video categories both generate
high average usage but relatively few developers.
These may be areas to watch.
■
The Average Active User Share by Category takes the
average of all active users for all the apps in the
category and divides that by the total population of
Facebook users. The large number of users makes
the percentage share numbers small; it's most useful
to focus on the difference in share, e.g., the average
Dating app has more share than the average
Messaging app.
■
Has the long tail come
to Facebook already?
It might be an “empty tail.” Like so many other forms of
entertainment, Facebook is developing into a hit-driven
business. In our initial report, we found that the top one
percent of the applications (the top 42 applications)
generate 74 percent of active usage, and the top two
percent of applications (the top 84 applications) generate 87 percent of active usage. The top has consolidated
even more since then. Even among the top developers,
you can see a steep drop in just the top 10, from more
than six million active users to less than one million. As
Top 50 Facebook developers, ranked by number of users
in other parts of the entertainment industry, a Facebook
developer needs to build a huge viral hit to get anywhere near the top. As the aggregator, the company
that benefits the most from niche applications is
Facebook itself.
Many people are familiar with Pareto’s 20/80 rule. The
concentration of active usage in top applications is even
more extreme than Pareto’s 20/80 rule. The top 20 percent of Facebook applications generate more than 98
percent of active usage.
Best practices of Facebook
application marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a staple of
Web 2.0 business thinking. Blogger (http://500hats.com),
business analyst, and Facebook conference organizer Dave
McClure recently helped outline some ideas in the new field
of Social Media Optimization (SMO). Here are some of his
thoughts on how to optimize for uptake on the new
Facebook platform.
There are several basic ways people discover new
Facebook applications and add them: They browse
through the directory of applications on Facebook and
discover an interesting new application; they receive an
application invite directly from a friend and accept it;
they see a new application on a friend’s profile and add
it; or they browse a Feed, read an application-related
message, and add the application
The first two ways started as the most popular but are
fading. In particular, the second method of spreading an
application, inviting people to it, was quite successful
until late June, when Facebook started putting limits on
how many people could be invited to an application
simultaneously. In essence, Facebook cut back on what
was “invite spam”. After Facebook limited invites to 10-ata-time, and then further to only 10 per day, this has
become a significantly less viral growth opportunity.
Discovering an application on a friend’s profile is
perhaps the most obvious means for growth. It’s certainly not as fast as the spam method, but it is a more
reliable vetting mechanism as the number of potential
applications continues to increase faster than any individual user can keep up. Over time, this can be a pretty
powerful opportunity—if the call-to-action messaging
on the profile is self-evident and the workflow after the
click is easy to follow. Facebook applications are free, but
they’re also impulse purchases. Developers have to make
it as simple as possible to locate and install them.
When users discover applications on a friend’s Feed,
the overt marketing message is even more subtle. Herein
lies the beauty of the Facebook feed. Early Facebook
users may remember that when Facebook introduced the
News Feed and Mini-Feed back in September 2006, the
company received a tremendous amount of criticism
for not educating the community as to what was coming.
But the Feed is crucial to Facebook’s success. It’s likely
that company execs were planning how to rollout the
Feed knowing they would soon be launching the
Platform at a later point. That’s part of why Facebook
was so adamant about not pulling back in the face of
the criticism. Company executives knew this was going
to be their big viral advertising engine. In a way,
Facebook adding the feeds is like Google introducing
paid search results. So, what are the best ways to make
sure your Facebook application is seen and adopted by
the most people?
1. Optimize the application directory listing and the
application’s “about” page. With so many applications
on Facebook, it’s likely most people don’t spend a lot
of time on these pages. So make them decent, and
present a clear call-to-action, but get this done and
go on with more important practices.
2. Get all your new users to spam their friends. Well, this
might be successful in the short term, but realize that
due to Facebook policy you will likely only get up to
10 invites sent out at a time—and each user will
probably only go through that process once. If you
can get high conversion on those 10, perhaps your
application will spread virally just from the invite.
Perhaps. And, before you put effort into this, do you
really want to be a spammer?
3. Optimize the look and feel of your application on the
user’s profile page. This is effort well-spent: Your users
will probably see it many times, and their friends will
browse the page and see it many times. Be sure to
plant a compelling call-to-action somewhere on the
application to bring in new users. It’s also important
to differentiate between the use cases for the profile
page owner and friends of the profile page owner
who are dropping by. The techniques for doing this
are not that dissimilar from standard conversion
optimization practices on normal websites and
landing pages. Know your audience, write compelling copy, create a catchy graphic or some kind of
hook, and then use a clearly placed link or highcontrast button that catches attention. Don’t do this
just once. A-B test it, tweak based on what you
learned, and repeat.
4. Use the “Share” button to let users distribute applications and content within Facebook. The “Share” button
is basically Facebook’s version of Digg or del.icio.us.
It’s a one-click way for users to share content, links,
and applications. “Share” can enable users to send
content and links to their friends quickly and easily, as
well as to post information directly to their profile—
which then shows up in other people’s Feeds.
5. Cross-market your Facebook application via other
Facebook applications. This technique has become
popular with the leading platform developers. Just as
a television network uses hit shows to help promote
newer and less-well known shows, these companies
can use their “best-selling” apps to help drive distribution for newer and less well-known apps.
6. Optimize the Feed notification messages and application events that generate News Feed and Mini-Feed
messages. This may be the single most important
element of marketing a Facebook application.
People on Facebook check their Feeds all the time.
When they do, they see what their friends are doing—
and they see what many of their friends’ apps are
doing too. Consistent and creative application marketing and event notification via the Feeds is the key
to unlocking the viral power of Facebook. The available inventory of feed notification messaging for
your app—that is, your advertising inventory—
is essentially limitless (assuming people keep your
application installed). Indeed, as long as users have
your application running, their actions combined
with application events will create Feed messages
and notifications that serve as constant marketing
opportunities for your applications.
The top 200 Facebook applications
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
1
Top Friends
Slide
Dating; Just for Fun
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
2,924
2,657,083
13%
20,219,468
0
2
FunWall
Slide
no category
1,228
2,529,123
20%
12,743,593
0
3
Super Wall
RockYou!
Photo; Video
1,695
1,612,806
12%
12,968,336
0
4
SuperPoke!
Slide
Alerts; Chat
4,010
1,294,692
10%
12,801,837
0
5
Video
Facebook
Messaging; Video
1,733
1,061,295
8%
12,632,670
0
6
iLike
iLike
Events; Music
3,925
618,855
6%
10,856,396
1
7
X Me
RockYou!
Alerts; Chat
2,503
614,473
6%
11,050,455
-1
8
Movies
Flixster
Just for Fun; Video
1,735
547,436
5%
10,986,290
1
9
Likeness
RockYou!
2,174
538,141
5%
10,788,803
-1
10
My Questions
Slide
Chat; Events
1,225
455,619
5%
9,980,538
1
11
Graffiti
Mark Kantor
Just for Fun; Messaging
5,836
410,552
5%
8,286,452
-1
12
Scrabulous
Rajat Agarwalla
Gaming; Just for Fun
4,919
404,421
32%
1,247,536
6
13
Compare People
Chainn
8,551
386,305
5%
8,232,800
3
14
Vampires
Blake Commagere
2,607
379,550
8%
4,829,147
3
15
Quizzes
Eric Diep
Education; Just for Fun
1,563
365,699
7%
5,245,231
-3
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
16
Causes
Blake Commagere
Education; Politics
17
Mobile
Facebook
Mobile; Photo
18
Moods
Drew Lustro
Alerts; Just for Fun
19
Free Gifts
Zachary Allia
Chat; Messaging
20
(fluff)Friends
Mike Sego
21
Entourage
Esgut
Messaging; Photo
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
1,477
341,818
5%
7,308,840
6
951
339,558
15%
2,331,585
-4
993
338,631
5%
6,429,435
3
5,353
329,140
5%
7,258,575
-5
33,103
325,171
11%
2,958,453
-1
107
309,070
9%
3,430,381
7
22
Hatching Eggs
Keith Schacht
1,330
303,718
10%
2,921,309
4
23
Grow-a-Gift
Keith Schacht
2,264
294,782
9%
3,382,609
1
1,639
267,922
10%
2,602,404
14
287
257,743
16%
1,609,629
80
24
Bumper Sticker
Harris Tsim
Just for Fun; Utility
25
Circle of Friends
Ephraim Luft
26
Jetman
Simeon Dorsey
905
248,042
24%
1,017,840
31
27
Booze Mail
Renkoo
Food and Drink; Just for Fun
2,216
246,931
5%
4,959,859
-12
28
Zombies
Blake Commagere
2,954
237,315
5%
4,891,226
-1
29
Superlatives
Esgut
Dating; Messaging
617
232,905
4%
6,559,667
-6
30
Honesty Box
Dan Peguine
Chat; Dating
4,652
224,687
6%
3,751,445
-10
31
Are YOU Interested?
eTwine Holdings
810
223,329
8%
2,901,986
1
32
WereWolves
Blake Commagere
1,427
216,622
8%
2,710,451
3
33
Slayers
Blake Commagere
1,123
215,437
15%
1,466,611
33
34
Fight Club
SocialNetGames
999
203,905
19%
1,090,470
3
35
Sticky Notes
J-Squared Media
1,366
197,210
4%
4,475,635
-6
2,796
183,870
5%
3,488,108
0
275
172,865
5%
3,785,050
-6
36
Texas HoldEm Poker
Eric Schiermeyer
37
Nicknames
Adam Gries
no category
38
My Aquarium
Greg Thomson
3,454
164,026
4%
4,447,207
-13
39
PetrolHead
Team Moulin
Just for Fun; Travel
1,822
159,889
16%
989,046
742
40
Advanced Wall
Phil Gibbons
File Sharing; Utility
198
141,972
3%
4,237,591
-6
41
Naughty Gifts
Going
1,730
140,655
4%
3,787,260
-11
42
HOT or NOT
HOTorNOT
5,144
137,267
6%
2,237,077
-1
43
Fortune Cookie
Slide
Just for Fun
1,326
130,316
2%
5,488,961
-10
44
PacMan
thewurld
1,329
129,207
7%
1,741,810
-5
45
My Christmas Tree
Angeline Low
Events; Messaging
221
124,965
18%
707,136
246
46
WarBook
Freewebs
7,965
119,894
23%
515,500
6
47
Cities I’ve Visited
TripAdvisor
Travel; Utility
1,003
110,738
3%
3,539,837
-1
48
IQ Test
profile.to
Education; Gaming
441
106,383
7%
1,564,929
26
49
Pirates vs. Ninjas
Austin AustinOne
4,239
102,526
4%
2,722,157
16
50
Oktoberfest Lives On
Hungry Machine LLC
243
94,257
5%
1,947,300
-7
51
Name Analyzer
Bemmu Sepponen
Just for Fun
411
88,489
5%
1,919,824
22
52
Raki Sofrasi
Gokhan Piskin
869
87,930
27%
323,977
214
53
Favorite Peeps!
Slide
2,612
86,350
3%
2,654,280
-13
The social networking operating system? Not yet.
Ali Partovi, CEO of popular Facebook application iLike,
notes, “If your application can benefit from social networking features, it’s just easier to build on Facebook.
It’s almost like a social network operating system.”
An operating system. Those are strong words. In fact,
Partovi notes, “My brother [Hadi, president of iLike]
was the lead product manager for Internet Explorer
from version 2.0 to 5.0, in the heart of the browser
wars. Our CTO created OLE [later COM and ActiveX]
while still in college. And they completely buy into this
operating system idea. This is as significant a shift in
computing as Windows versus DOS or the introduction
of the Web.” Strong words indeed.
Max Levchin, founder of Slide, the top application
developer on Facebook, concurs. He too brought up
the operating system analogy, saying that he regards
all of the social networking platforms as operating systems of a sort. They all provide data storage, APIs that
let developers use that storage, and they control the
means of communication with the user and with other
actors in the system.
Levchin sees the location of the user’s data as central to
the success of operating systems. Having data on a PC in
local file storage is the core component that keeps the
desktop as the dominant paradigm. Applications that
have merely sought to replicate desktop functionality
on the Web aren’t enough. But applications that rely on
Web-native data, such as the social data captured in
social networking platforms, are poised, he thinks, to
finally challenge the dominance of the desktop.
The divide between social network native users and
outsiders can perhaps already be seen in the divide
between users who find it irritating that they receive
an email asking them to go to Facebook to retrieve a
message sent to them by another user. Facebook
natives think nothing of it, and quite possibly never
even see that external email. They are already living in
the new social platform. (Of course, an application,
Email Me Instead, has been released to serve those
who haven’t yet gone native, although it’s too cumbersome to be useful.)
At O’Reilly Media, we’ve long been tracking the emergence of what we’ve called the Internet operating system, with subsystems that provide access not to
devices, like a traditional operating system, but to particular classes of data, such as location, identity, events,
products, and so forth. As such, the idea of Facebook as
an operating system has resonance.
However, we believe that even the most successful Web
2.0 platforms so far are only components of operating
systems, parts of what will one day be a more fully integrated Internet operating system. Google Maps, the
leading platform for third-party location-based appli-
cations, is well on its way to becoming the location
subsystem; various social networks (including open
source projects like Brad Fitzpatrick’s elsewhere.im) are
competing to provide the social network subsystem
(though we believe that other applications with identity style subsystems, including payment systems, will
need to be integrated with social networks before they
provide a full identity subsystem). Google’s search and
advertising platforms are also clearly key components
of the future network operating system. Meanwhile,
Amazon’s S3 and EC2 are providing widely used lowerlevel storage and compute subsystems.
If we are to think of the new Web platforms as operating systems, one question that immediately raises its
ugly head is the risk of competition between the platform provider and the application developer. Many
developers on both Windows and Mac OS platforms
have painful memories of once-happy open arcades
turning into closed company towns. Both Partovi and
Levchin acknowledge the risk, but think that it is not
high for the short term. Partovi notes “You can’t say
forever, but the current management has clearly made
a commitment to an open platform for developers.”
Levchin says, “For the short term, it would be problematic for them to change course.”
Partovi notes that before Facebook launched the platform, iLike had made a bid to be the exclusive music
application for Facebook, but were turned down on the
basis that Facebook didn’t want to give exclusivity to
any application. “Lots of people are building applications—Top Friends, Superpoke, and My Questions, for
instance—that compete with Facebook’s own core
applications. That sends a strong message that they
really are trying to build a platform.” What’s more,
when Facebook has introduced new applications of
their own, such as Video, it is using the same developer
APIs, and showing up in the same listings as third party
applications, rather than being given special status.
Levchin notes that Facebook will compete, just as any
other application developer would, to be the best at
what it does. For example, Facebook did launch multimedia attachments to its Wall application after Slide
introduced an application with that feature.
The strongest argument for Facebook’s platform neutrality is one mentioned by neither Partovi nor Levchin:
As long as Facebook’s competition is primarily with
other social network platforms, its commitment to
open the platform to commercial activity by thirdparty developers remains one of its strongest business
advantages. As was the case with Microsoft, competition with application vendors and the hollowing out of
the developer ecosystem didn’t happen until the platform itself became dominant.
In short, the specter of platform competing with application remains, but for now, it appears a distant future
threat.
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
54
Fighters’ Club
Atif Nazir
Alerts; Gaming
9,182
86,178
5%
1,832,870
-6
55
Where I’ve Been
Craig Ulliott
Travel; Utility
4,303
85,977
2%
3,843,333
-10
56
Friend Block
Robby Campano
Just for Fun; Photo
209
83,087
12%
668,264
-3
57
Sketch Me
Fendoo, Ltd
Just for Fun; Photo
43
79,611
5%
1,603,825
26
58
My Room
Social Emotions
2,174
67,820
6%
1,163,655
-7
59
Rock Paper & Scissors
Acubix SB
62
67,632
10%
698,372
10
60
Pirates
Brian Phillips
9,394
65,780
4%
1,539,059
-6
61
Sports Bets
kickflip
Money; Sports
324
63,314
16%
406,570
39
62
ScrapBox (GlitterBox)
ScrapBox
340
63,210
6%
1,105,809
-12
63
WATER FIGHT!
Matt Lorenzen
Just for Fun
44
61,505
7%
886,097
23
64
My Garden
Tim Saberi
1,912
61,460
3%
2,048,675
-17
65
Twisted Christmas
Jared Nickerson
442
58,440
17%
352,587
444
66
Reputation
FrozenBear
19
57,942
19%
306,068
770
67
Astrology
Astrolis
Dating; Fashion
1,249
56,844
5%
1,177,292
1
68
What’s Your Stripper Name?
Sue Zann Toh
Just for Fun
1,177
56,812
2%
2,840,607
-12
69
Poke Pro
Adam (London)
1,006
56,325
2%
2,645,800
-20
70
TV Show Trivia
Mesmo.TV
Gaming; Video
385
56,188
3%
1,978,223
-28
71
Magic 8 ball
Slide
no category
244
53,085
3%
1,769,519
-13
72
Pet Dragons
Danny Olefsky
2,289
53,053
26%
203,288
59
73
We’re Related
FamilyLink
423
50,894
10%
504,522
73
74
Hockey Pool
Ben Nevile
Gaming; Sports
548
50,866
16%
324,026
27
75
ATTACK!
Eric Schiermeyer
394
49,225
11%
448,399
131
76
GridView
Michael Plasmeier
Just for Fun; Photo
426
48,934
15%
329,204
1
77
How Sexy Is Your Name
Calculator
WishAFriend
Just for Fun
108
48,760
6%
855,672
36
78
Horoscopes
RockYou!
14,198
48,342
1%
4,834,285
-18
79
Jack O’Lantern
Greg Thomson
no category
805
47,887
5%
890,229
-24
80
Slideshows
RockYou!
Photo
553
45,966
2%
2,172,840
-13
81
PuzzleBee
Robert Clarkson
102
45,679
5%
943,950
-15
82
Socialmoth
Paul McKellar
Chat; Just for Fun
3,653
45,063
5%
990,045
-21
83
Traveler IQ Challenge
TravelPod
Just for Fun; Travel
823
45,015
4%
1,021,828
-13
84
Define Me
Alan Christopher Thomas
128
43,932
3%
1,293,609
4
85
Big Photo
Jerome Poichet
Photo; Utility
304
43,920
5%
829,969
4
86
Holiday Gifts
Trippert
Chat; Messaging
140
43,881
7%
615,402
7
87
Friend Wheel
Thomas Fletcher
Just for Fun
335
43,367
5%
801,953
-3
88
Daily Babe
Eric Kirse
Dating; Photo
139
42,860
14%
303,191
23
89
My Music
Qloud
File Sharing; Music
18
41,833
4%
981,669
5
90
Human Pets
Patrick Shyu
Dating; Fashion
4,309
40,929
9%
441,754
8
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
Fashion; Just for Fun
1,042
40,695
1%
4,069,500
-47
6,599
40,659
4%
1,102,479
-28
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
91
HotLists
HOTorNOT
92
Jedi vs Sith
thewurld
93
MyGifts
RockYou!
42
39,159
7%
600,603
93
94
Hot Potato
Hungry Machine LLC
19
37,536
4%
887,783
-23
95
HoboWars
HellBored Pty Ltd
614
36,629
17%
212,463
58
96
KissMe
Joel Darnauer
18
36,267
32%
108,433
96
97
Make A Baby
Ben Savage
485
36,100
24%
156,717
161
98
Crushes
itMayBe Media LLC
332
34,285
5%
708,150
-16
99
Countdown Calendar
Paperade
Alerts; Events
305
33,528
9%
384,630
-4
100
Tribün
Okay Tuğ
Sports
232
33,112
20%
175,256
100
101
iDescribe
Yazeed Al Oyoun
106
33,094
7%
474,243
31
102
Gingerbread Cookies
Greg Thomson
no category
134
32,752
26%
133,398
102
103
Blackjack
Eric Schiermeyer
104
32,692
5%
653,845
-7
104
Dogbook
Poolhouse
Just for Fun; Photo
1,490
31,854
4%
860,012
-28
105
Instant Messaging
Digital Standard
Chat; Mobile
78
31,446
2%
1,758,914
-27
106
True or False?
Macho Pink
44
31,396
6%
550,872
-3
107
My Purity Test
Kavin Mickey Asavanant
108
Tetris Tournament
fbgames
no category
109
Tattoos
kickflip
Messaging
110
Vampires vs. Werewolves
Austin AustinOne
111
Pets
James Lin
8,867
112
Poppy Appeal
Maria Lewis
Education; Events
19
113
What Drug Are You?
Pogostick!
114
Food Fight!
Discoball Studio
115
Visual Bookshelf
Hungry Machine LLC
116
FaceDouble Celebrity
Look-alike
FacéDouble
117
Emote
118
119
409
31,364
2%
1,757,007
-48
1,450
31,085
10%
302,414
2
326
30,331
2%
1,516,585
-30
2,821
29,914
4%
815,915
29
29,673
4%
741,835
-39
29,227
44%
52,490
112
23
29,167
37%
80,310
113
7,781
28,392
1%
2,839,257
-51
869
27,784
5%
609,873
-3
Fashion; Mobile
124
27,523
5%
536,635
5
RockYou!
Alerts; Chat
256
26,249
2%
1,837,435
-27
Daily Horoscope
DailyHoroscopes.net
ScoreMe
Mark Rose
120
Starcraft Cows
Patrick Shyu
121
Famous Quotes
David Young
1,125
25,802
5%
566,797
-11
24
25,326
11%
240,501
79
1,217
25,219
37%
71,381
120
1,195
24,651
2%
1,285,107
-29
122
Crowd Cloud
Congoo
123
Free Condoms
Alex Page
Just for Fun
124
Love Ice Cream
Angeline Low
125
Counter Strike: Red Team Go
Steven Bayhack
126
My Sexy Halloween Costume
Robert Clarkson
127
My Graveyard
Tim Saberi
42
24,582
68%
40,905
1,026
316
24,495
7%
346,403
41
82
24,413
8%
301,340
3
2,478
23,921
10%
243,308
34
Fashion; Just for Fun
35
23,532
8%
287,810
126
203
23,507
5%
496,878
-47
Company profile: iLike
iLike is a Seattle-based social music site, founded in
2002 by twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi to acquire
the assets of Garageband.com. Investors include legendary Silicon Valley VC Vinod Khosla (who is also an
investor in Slide), former AOL head Bob Pittman, and
strategic investor Ticketmaster.
iLike’s promise is to help people find music they like. It
provides a platform for fans to share iTunes playlists
with friends, get new music recommendations and free
MP3s, and receive notifications when their favorite
performers are playing nearby. For performers, iLike
provides a platform to connect with fans. iLike
achieved wide notice recently when it announced that
it had acquired as many users in its first week on
Facebook as it had acquired in nine months on the
open Web.
iLike is the fifth most popular application on Facebook.
We caught up with Ali Partovi, co-founder and CEO of
iLike, to ask about the impact of Facebook on his
business.
iLike.com already had millions of Web users before it
launched its Facebook application, but, Partovi says,
“Facebook is just a better place to do business.” iLike
has artist pages on both iLike.com and on Facebook,
but on Facebook, it’s easy to see which of your friends
like the same artists, you can connect with them, or let
them know you want to go to an upcoming concert.
iLike was building social features like these for its Web
site, but it’s far easier to do so on Facebook. What’s
more, features are adopted more quickly. As a result,
while the initial effort was to port the external iLike
application to Facebook, new features are now developed on what Partovi refers to as Facebook’s “social
network operating system,” and then ported back to
iLike.com.
“A better place to do business” refers to Facebook’s
innovative business model for application developers.
The pixel share revenue model lets iLike monetize its
application on Facebook in exactly the same way it
monetizes the iLike.com site, through advertising and
iLike on the Web
iLike inside Facebook
affiliate revenue (Amazon, iTunes, TicketMaster, etc.).
However, Facebook provides additional demographic
data, making Facebook users even more valuable to
advertisers. Revenue literally doubled “overnight”
when iLike launched its Facebook application. (iLike’s
primary Web competitor, last.fm, was much slower to
move to the Facebook platform and suffered for it.)
Because Facebook provides additional demographic
information, iLike’s customers on Facebook are potentially more valuable to iLike’s advertisers. In addition,
Partovi notes, Facebook’s openness in allowing developers to access that user information helps build value
for iLike. “Facebook shares information with us, but not
the other way around,” Partovi notes. “This means that
an application is able to build its own proprietary
value, which they can exploit both on and off
Facebook. That’s one more part of what makes
Facebook attractive as a platform.”
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
128
Talking Smileys
Webfetti
Just for Fun
130
23,163
3%
955,675
128
129
Chinese Zodiac Horoscope
Pluckysoft
461
23,115
4%
653,587
-1
130
Fantasy Stock Exchange
HedgeStop
Business; Money
131
My Heritage
Stuzo
661
23,106
13%
173,720
-21
1,130
23,104
3%
758,403
42
132
MindJolt Games
MindJolt
47
23,094
20%
116,382
118
133
Project Playlist
Ram Prayaga
Music
247
22,357
9%
256,875
-13
134
Premier League Picks
Fantasy Moguls
Gaming; Sports
128
22,297
10%
229,858
-26
135
Friend Grid
Surojit Niyogi
199
22,205
4%
555,137
135
136
Trick-or-Treat Halloween
Patrick Hankinson
Events; Just for Fun
202
21,763
18%
119,716
496
137
Neighborhoods
Point2 Technologies
Classified; Events
880
21,566
4%
606,791
-8
138
AceBucks
Buddy Media
Just for Fun; Money
452
21,526
8%
259,769
312
139
Red Sox Nation
Red Sox Nation
Just for Fun; Sports
3,186
21,315
5%
413,736
-64
140
Chess
Jamie Holding
1,536
21,304
16%
134,255
20
141
Mardi Gras
Hungry Machine LLC
Events; Just for Fun
284
20,934
1%
2,093,428
-56
142
Send SMS - Text Messaging
Josh Yudaken
Messaging; Mobile
411
20,858
2%
1,164,200
-80
143
Osmanlı Pokesi
Tolga Saygı
Alerts; Messaging
461
20,542
12%
165,303
143
144
Addicted to Grey’s Anatomy
Watercooler
Chat; Video
27
20,198
7%
301,603
-19
145
Sex Appeal
Pollection
74
19,730
4%
556,923
-31
146
Boombox
Adam Mosseri
File Sharing; Music
667
19,723
12%
168,639
-12
147
My Solar System
Tim Saberi
no category
244
19,666
2%
983,321
-66
148
My Personality
David Stillwell
391
19,548
2%
1,363,378
-44
149
What Drink Are You?
Pogostick!
41
19,064
9%
203,380
296
150
Drink Recipes
RockYou!
151
Books iRead
Social Wizards
Education; Utility
152
Bible Verses
RockYou!
153
Are You Normal?
Kinzin
154
Chuck Norris
RockYou!
155
I Wanna Get Leid
Hungry Machine LLC
156
Lick My Frog
157
Doodle Friends
158
159
436
19,048
2%
1,047,735
-44
1,198
18,582
3%
570,261
-27
no category
570
18,092
3%
608,370
-29
Just for Fun
87
17,655
18%
101,117
350
Photo; Utility
1,817
17,521
4%
425,273
-32
Just for Fun
172
17,479
2%
823,876
-58
Dorian Lux
105
17,379
14%
128,763
467
Angeline Low
Messaging; Photo
48
17,267
20%
87,246
201
Know Me Well?
Chris Sim
29
17,209
42%
40,229
158
Interview
Eric Diep
Education
423
17,142
2%
857,114
-21
160
South Park Character Creator
Lindsey Magi
Photo
381
16,731
3%
514,535
-15
161
Trick or Treat
ArcaMax
30
16,305
7%
229,001
161
162
Super Mario Game
WEB CARTOONS, LLC
21
16,080
25%
68,477
162
163
Music Videos
RockYou!
Music; Video
279
16,069
1%
1,606,900
-45
164
10 Second Interview
Grant Goodale
Just for Fun
315
16,034
5%
331,944
-7
165
Magnetic Words
Adam (London)
201
15,933
4%
402,362
5
Review
Count
Active Users
PCT
Active
Total Installs
Rank
Change
759
Gaming; Sports
231
15,870
1%
1,314,092
-50
15,866
10%
163,926
-37
Erman Güner
Alerts; Politics
Dank Apps
1,512
15,846
5%
355,400
168
382
15,659
8%
209,130
-43
FB Addict - are you hooked
on FB?
Adam (London)
83
15,657
10%
158,865
170
171
Picnik
Bitnik
172
LOLcats
Brian Phillips
Photo; Utility
630
15,636
6%
273,051
-15
Just for Fun; Photo
382
15,462
9%
180,861
-10
173
Chocolate Fantasy
Social Wizards
174
Countdown
Brewster Jennings Web
Services
62
15,441
3%
546,202
-58
101
15,418
9%
176,715
-22
175
Superlatives
Eric Diep
214
15,252
1%
1,525,285
-88
176
Profile Counter
Robert Clarkson
177
Halayperest
41? 29!
Just for Fun
15
14,995
5%
284,473
-57
Just for Fun
361
14,915
23%
69,902
177
178
Social Chat
179
Trick or Treat
Eric Schiermeyer
Chat; Just for Fun
234
14,784
3%
492,804
-36
Coolapps
2
14,711
16%
93,971
179
180
181
Addicted to Scrubs
Watercooler
Chat; Video
Catbook
Poolhouse
Just for Fun; Photo
182
Free Hug
Rob Brennan
183
Greek Family Tree
Chapter Communications
184
Live It Up
Esgut
185
Addicted to Friends
Watercooler
186
More About Me
Blue Semantics, LLC
187
Nuri Alço
Kazim Etiksan
188
Addicted to The Simpsons
189
Blind Date
190
191
Rank
Application
Supplier
Categories
166
Harry Potter Magic Spells
Social Wizards
167
Pro Football Pick’em
Pickspal
168
Terore Hayir
169
The Lotto
170
23
14,561
6%
243,952
-34
953
14,427
4%
390,732
-46
17
14,249
14%
108,910
364
426
14,117
7%
215,770
-7
58
14,091
2%
664,445
-93
Chat; Video
34
13,978
5%
281,138
-35
40
13,919
4%
347,992
-28
Chat; Just for Fun
152
13,851
30%
40,214
187
Watercooler
Just for Fun; Video
29
13,649
4%
385,871
-47
Betsy Kend
60
13,221
5%
273,378
-53
Movie Message
Razz
30
13,115
26%
45,691
783
Freebee Gifts
freebee
Just for Fun; Money
36
13,101
3%
384,229
5
192
Fantasy Football
Sport Interactiva
Just for Fun; Sports
848
12,926
7%
190,107
-37
193
Atatürk Köşesi
Tolga Saygı
Education; Events
136
12,617
23%
54,934
193
194
Double Dare
Esgut
Dating; Messaging
48
12,568
1%
1,256,857
-92
195
YouTube Video Box
Craig Bovis
File Sharing; Video
128
12,527
5%
231,667
-26
196
PurePlay Cash Poker
PurePlay
390
12,439
3%
382,078
-33
197
Circle of Trust
Chainn
no category
33
12,411
8%
164,824
197
198
Tarot
Astrolis
84
12,380
2%
619,007
-14
199
Games
RockYou!
210
12,288
2%
778,342
-66
200
Daily Hunk
Maria Lewis
Just for Fun; Photo
54
12,206
6%
194,893
-34
Company profile: Slide
Slide was founded in 2004 by Max Levchin, a cofounder of Paypal. Investors include Mayfield Fund,
Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, and Founders
Fund. The Slide.com website was already the 22ndth
most trafficked site on the Web, when the company
launched on Facebook, according to Levchin. But
Slide’s position as the top application developer on
Facebook is no small addition to its business. Levchin
estimates that as many as two-thirds of all Facebook’s
30 million plus users have installed at least one of
Slide’s apps, which include Top Friends, Superpoke, and
My Questions.
Levchin notes that the number of installs is just the
start of the game. What the company is focused on now
is engagement, with the goal of having daily reach
equal to monthly reach. “All of the smartest application
developers are focused on this,” he notes. “It isn’t how
many users you have. It’s engagement: from users, to
usage.”
Slide on the Web
Slide’s strategy has been to launch many small applications, each providing a single feature. In addition to
developing its own applications, Slide has acquired
several, most notably Superpoke, an application developed by three college students, who have now joined
the Slide team.
Slide’s most popular application, Top Friends, the top
application on Facebook, provides more control over
which friends you interact with, and allows an “inner
circle,” helping organize a broader circle of Facebook
acquaintances than would be possible otherwise. Top
Friends addresses the issue found on many social networks, of the social pressure to add as “friends” anyone
you know. This degrades the performance of social
networking features such as the Mini Feed, which helps
you to keep up with your friends’ activities and whereabouts. However, we believe that even Top Friends
doesn’t go far enough. Social networks are a kind of
consumer relationship management system (the new
“CRM”?), and as such will eventually need to provide
management features for many overlapping networks.
Slide inside Facebook
The Slide.com website now is positioned as a kind of
image waystation between all of the social networks.
From a single application, you can upload your images
from MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and Friendster, not to
mention other image hosting sites like Flickr and
Photobucket (now part of MySpace.) Right now, the
image transfer is one way, into Slide, but it’s possible,
as these sites provide richer APIs, that the site could
become a central hub for image management across
multiple sites.
Conclusion
Facebook’s open platform appears not just to be successful at attracting users
and application developers, it also seems to be capturing buzz and mindshare.
The Facebook numbers and stories are resonating with venture capitalists,
start-ups (contemplating distribution options), established companies, and
technology savvy folks based on discussions and industry events over the last
few weeks.
Does Facebook’s relatively open platform for applications help Facebook
become the major player in the social network arena? The analysis isn’t deep
enough to show causal relationships, but we do see concurrent relationships
between the rise in users and the adoption of popular applications. People are
joining Facebook, they are using the applications, and developers continue to
add to the application pool. Viral network effects appear to drive application
adoption. Now the question for Facebook is critical mass—and how open its
platform will be. Already we’re seeing the company cracking down on developers who are digging too deeply into Facebook’s API. Providing a genuinely
open application platform that helps developers make money would distinguish
Facebook from the coming competition.
©2007 O’Reilly Media, Inc. O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 70772

The Facebook Application Platform

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