Andrew Chen

I’m not surprised about the decline, it’s akin to many real world scenarios...where one has the challenge of minimizing drop off and building lasting engagement. And in terms of "viral", I think if you build strong, meangingful engagement - the app benefits. People are simply more willing & happy to spread the word because it rewards them in some way.

Fundamentally, seems like what drives usage drop off for installed FB apps is that they simply lose value and are not "worth" the effort or space on your page. The user doesn’t get as much value from the experience as they once did, both emotionally and rationally. Boredom can also play into this. There’s simply no “news” and learning. It’s akin to having a friend who never evolves and tells the same jokes, one may eventually lose interest. ;)

Feel like lots can be done to address drop off. It’s about creating new “news”, evolving and adding value, enabling new types of interactions, and driving other forms of interest so you don’t become obsolete.

With the above in mind + looking at any data, one should try to understand how this dynamic plays out for their app and then test/learn against different strategies/tactics to build that healthy, long term “relationship” and ultimately improve the “LTV” of their user base (however they define that).

could look at what consumer “segments” are on the app? What is your app’s typical “lifecycle”…how does that vary by segment or does it? Can you make an intervention at a particular point in that lifecycle to stimulate re-usage? What “permanent” features of your site should you have to engage folks with new "news" w/out being too offensive/aggressive & unwanted…

just some thoughts.

I designed a facebook app and attended F8 last may, I think I have some insight...

There are a bunch of design flaws with the Facebook apps including they way they are developed and deployed. 1) The apps themselves are not designed FOR the user. Few apps are developed with 'goal centered', or 'user centered' design techniques. This makes them un-sticky. They are out of context for users and they aren't meaningful for people. 2) Facebook will never import data which is independent from Facebook (as Mike suggests above). Facebook wont make any money that way, and it would be tricky to support that technically. Google does it though. 3) Finally, there's just too many of these apps and most of them just aren't that good. I think users realize that they are a form of advertising. Even some of the good apps are buggy, they dont work correctly. All of this impacts usability and user experience to the point where people just stop using this stuff over time. We all know this already.

is it just me, or are people starting to ignore Facebook app requests en masse? I am starting to think that Facebook apps only really get adopted during a user's honeymoon period. I'm noticing a trend among my FB pals who have been on there for more than a few months (and myself included) where we're just starting to ignore every request... it just takes too long to sort through all those dumb things, and many of them just feel stupid (i.e. I clicked all that and cluttered up my profile, so it could tell me that my zombie bought my friend's zombie a drink? uhhhh.....).

If the social graph is the next big communications medium, perhaps we're moving past the "FW:FW:FW:FW:FW" phase that email went through in the mid 90's.

Make them about things that people do independent of Facebook: blogs, books, movies, music, things that represent real information about people and not just gimmicky "poking". what is that, anyway?

It'd be nice to see all of these plotted by time. I'd be interested to see if the 'extended profile' box has any impact on people adding/removing applications.