10 Comments »I have spent hours over the past few days browsing through the Facebook application directory. The effort to find a good application has grown exponentially. While developers are still churning out applications, the majority of them just plain suck. Maybe it’s that I have seen so many that they have lost their pizazz, but I seriously think the application saturation point has been reached and surpassed. While there is the occasional amazing application such as Appsaholic, many developers are still satisfied with launching crappy applications. Additionally, many existing web companies are rolling out the Facebook versions of their web 2.0 application with little fanfare. So where do we go from here?
First off, application developers will continue to roll out application after application hoping to grab a piece of the now ended land grab. The majority of these applications will fail to experience viral growth. There is still room for many to grow though. Over 100 applications with under 10,000 users are growing at a rate of at least 4% a day. While not jaw dropping, this is still pretty phenomenal when compounding the growth over weeks or months.
Second, applications are going to have to become more robust. I have been saying this for weeks and have only recently begun to see this happen. The feature rich, ReverbNation application that I covered a couple days ago is an excellent example of this. ReverbNation dedicated their entire development force to creating the application. This is a sign of rapid growth in the competitive landscape. Previously, individual developers could launch applications and expect to have instantaneous adoption by tens of thousands of people. Soon enough, larger development teams will be required.
Finally, I’d like to comment on where other social network development platforms will go. When MySpace and LinkedIn launch their platforms there will need to be ways of differentiating themselves. I think the primary way, at least for LinkedIn, will be to have a application filtering process. Not all applications will be approved. Facebook is the wild west, and I have a feeling that LinkedIn is going to avoid that. Could you imagine your professional profile having a Bush countdown clock? I can’t. As a result I have a feeling that we will see other networks open up, but chances are they will be more conservative about what applications they approve and which ones they don’t.
I don't think a saturation point has been reached at all. Facebook apps are in reality, websites. Have we reached the saturation point for websites?
To me this just feels like 1999 with tons of useless sites on Geocities. Within the crowd, though, some have real value ( http://apps.facebook.com/carpool/ ) and I think that over time this will sort itself out.
The directory itself will probably be useless in not too long, just as web directories like Yahoo and DMOZ are essentially unused now, in favour of search engines.
I'm going to disagree. For example, today a PayPal application was launched, which is pretty revolutionary. The combined reputation and security of PayPal and Facebook could really take non-shopping online payment mainstream. I think more and more it's the established companies that are going to take the time (and have the expertise) to build great application. Another example would be Yahoo!'s new music videos application, which is incredibly well done. It's going to be hard for non-corporations to compete with this kind of quality. If this is a good or bad thing is up for debate, but I don't thinik we've hit a saturation point as it will take more time for well thought out applications to be launched.
Yeah I'm getting hammered on this one. I guess my train of thought was more along the lines that there is a saturation of crappy applications. Initially people were adding just about anything they could find but that rapidly ended.
I think that the web directory analogy is a good one and that's ultimately what i'm experiencing. There are so many bad applications that it's getting more difficult to filter out the bad ones.
Maybe I'm just having application directory overload.
I don’t think a saturation point has been reached at all. Facebook apps are in reality, websites. Have we reached the saturation point for websites?
To me this just feels like 1999 with tons of useless sites on Geocities. Within the crowd, though, some have real value ( http://apps.facebook.com/carpool/ ) and I think that over time this will sort itself out.
The directory itself will probably be useless in not too long, just as web directories like Yahoo and DMOZ are essentially unused now, in favour of search engines.
I’m going to disagree. For example, today a PayPal application was launched, which is pretty revolutionary. The combined reputation and security of PayPal and Facebook could really take non-shopping online payment mainstream. I think more and more it’s the established companies that are going to take the time (and have the expertise) to build great application. Another example would be Yahoo!’s new music videos application, which is incredibly well done. It’s going to be hard for non-corporations to compete with this kind of quality. If this is a good or bad thing is up for debate, but I don’t thinik we’ve hit a saturation point as it will take more time for well thought out applications to be launched.
Yeah I’m getting hammered on this one. I guess my train of thought was more along the lines that there is a saturation of crappy applications. Initially people were adding just about anything they could find but that rapidly ended.
I think that the web directory analogy is a good one and that’s ultimately what i’m experiencing. There are so many bad applications that it’s getting more difficult to filter out the bad ones.
Maybe I’m just having application directory overload.
Yeah–I definitely agree with the web directory analogy. I don't think they've done a good enough job of giving users the tools to find applications. Facebook should be able to make recommendations based on what you've added so far (in the same way that Google Sidebar recommends gadgets) or a list of the applications most popular among your friends. Right now, for example, having 30 straight applications for hockey team news makes it difficult to really get to what new applications have just been launched. The “Recently Popular” doesn't really work very well either, I don't think.
Yeah–I definitely agree with the web directory analogy. I don’t think they’ve done a good enough job of giving users the tools to find applications. Facebook should be able to make recommendations based on what you’ve added so far (in the same way that Google Sidebar recommends gadgets) or a list of the applications most popular among your friends. Right now, for example, having 30 straight applications for hockey team news makes it difficult to really get to what new applications have just been launched. The “Recently Popular” doesn’t really work very well either, I don’t think.
From the vantage point of someone scouring the apps universe, of course you'll encounter tons of crap. Look at all the detritus polluting sourceforge. The good ones bubble up to the profiles of your non-scouring friends. A lot of these apps are written by one or two man teams of high school or college students as toys or learning experiments. “Crap” can be reframed as homework being done by a rising generation by developers. The more polished apps of the second, third, fourth, and successive waves can exploit this self-taught developer base.
From the vantage point of someone scouring the apps universe, of course you’ll encounter tons of crap. Look at all the detritus polluting sourceforge. The good ones bubble up to the profiles of your non-scouring friends. A lot of these apps are written by one or two man teams of high school or college students as toys or learning experiments. “Crap” can be reframed as homework being done by a rising generation by developers. The more polished apps of the second, third, fourth, and successive waves can exploit this self-taught developer base.