Andrew Chen

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What’s happening with the top Facebook apps?

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I collected the charts for the top Facebook apps and posted them below – overall, there seems to be a general decline. Note that this may NOT be a bad thing – perhaps developers are getting incented to create deeper and richer apps – more details below.

Anyway, looking at these charts: Why is this happening?

A couple thoughts:

  • More apps means more competition (even for the top apps), which creates fragmentation – it become harder to keep any good thing going
  • Changes to the Facebook viral channels are continually driving down the response rates, incenting developers to create stickier apps that can retain more active users
  • Continual use/abuse of the Facebook viral channels are making users cynical, driving down response rates
  • The top apps have hit the "carrying capacity" of the Facebook userbase, and have saturated the entire network – thus, the only option is for the usage to decay over time, since more viral growth isn’t an option

There’s probably multiple explanations here – note that for some of this, Facebook may be "guiding" the developers to create more meaningful applications via this "active users" metric, so even if the top apps are losing users, that’s OK.

Written by Andrew Chen

February 10th, 2008 at 12:41 am

Posted in Uncategorized

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  • Compare People is declining because it's a very interesting concept that's poorly executed. There is a lot of frustration on the message board for it, and the authors insist on adding a lot of stupid and annoying viral hooks into the app which makes it a pain to use. For example, it asks you to invite friends after EVERY comparison set. Maybe after the first 30 times, it should realize you're probably not going to invite anyone else.

  • Cindy

    Hi Andrew,


    I've been trying to find a source that shows performance overtime for facebook apps. The charts you have, is this accessible data anyone can tap into or did you compile the data on your own? Be glad to get any tips!


    Thanks,

    CJ

  • The profile cleanup wizard probably wiped a bunch of apps off profile pages, which is a huge source of virality for apps. Also, minifeed controls like "i didn't do this" and newsfeed controls that allow you to bury events are probably taking their toll on the most annoying/viral apps. Additionally, platform changes such as giving preference to newsfeed links that do *not* require an app install, plus eliminating events where you were not a primary actor.... all these things are effectively Facebook's spam control experiments. They amount to a predictable decline in usage for the biggest apps, most of which are useless spam-generators.

  • Hey Andrew,


    As usual another great post. My thinking is that people are getting tired of application spam and now even if a friend sends them an invite they don't want to go through the hassle of launching yet another dumb app.


    I struggle with what is a good app for FB - it seems like if an app is worth building then FBML seriously limits what you can do. Once you have been sent a drink or bitten by a zombie - do you really want to do it again?


    The native functionality within FB addresses a lot of user needs - I think the test would be - what FB app would you pay for?


    In any event thanks Andrew for asking questions and creating a place for a dialog.


    Cheers - Eric

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