
F8ce the music: Facebook applications are declining in popularity - toffer
http://saunderslog.com/2008/01/27/f8ce-the-music/
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kirse
My app continues to add about 5,000+ users per day and total user count just
passed 650k.

7-day rolling-window usage statistics are up about 20% since Nov/Dec and just
two days ago hit a new record for number of active users in one day.

I don't force users to invite for any features, but every month or two I do
flip a switch and have them bounced (just once) to the invite page as a
friendly "Hey, tell your friends!" notice. I also run contests that use the
invites as entries -- you'd be surprised how many people suddenly love sending
invites once they realize more invites = more chances to win a $500 Nintendo
Wii gaming package =)

Apps are hardly slowing down on Facebook, but I wholeheartedly agree that the
problem of forcing invites has become more widespread and needs an immediate
fix. That and the ridiculous amount of spammers smearing links all over
developer review walls, discussion boards and fb:comment sections.

~~~
hugh
I don't want this to sound like a personal attack, but personally I'd consider
the "prizes for invites" thing to be barely a step above the "forced invites"
thing. Either way, you're encouraging people to spam their friends -- not
because they think their friends would be interested in this particular app,
but in order to get some miniscule personal benefit ($500 divided by how many
users?)

Personally, I'd be happy to see the ability to send invites turned off
altogether. If any friend of mine really thinks I'll be interested in a
particular app, they can damn well take the time to write me a message about
it.

~~~
kirse
No offense taken, it's really a matter of how you think invites should be
used. Personally I'm fine with motivating people to invite their friends - so
long as it's not forced on them. At the bottom of it all, my users are given
the choice, whether or not my incentive might sway them.

The other reasoning for my invite system is that I created the first "Top
Friends" app to make it into the Facebook directory (when there were about 50
apps total). I had actually beaten Slide to their own TopFriends release and
was pretty far ahead on users compared to their TF app for a couple of weeks.

At one point, however, I noticed they had been growing at a much faster rate.
Turns out that Slide had been forcing users to mass-invite every single friend
when they added the app, something I distinctly chose not to do (out of
goodwill for my users). Well, I know where that strategy now got me -- beaten
by the company that now runs the top app on Facebook with 20+ million users.

So as a developer, leveraging invites in such a conservative manner was a bad
mistake and I'll never forget that multi-million dollar lesson.

------
Leon
I article says that application popularity is declining, but could it also be
that people are using a wider variety of applications?

I'd like to see the numbers on how many app's are installed total vs. time.

Just because the top 10 are losing market share doesn't mean all are. My guess
is that more app's have been introduced into the market since developers have
had time to make more, and that's where the users are going.

