9 Comments »There has been so much talk about what makes a successful application on Facebook. I’m starting to realize what really makes them successful. Last night Eric Schiller notified me of an application that him and his friend Matt Carpenter created. The application is called “Pee on Your Friends.” I have refrained from writing about these types of applications until now. It is completely frustrating to watch dumb applications become popular, but I am watching it happen time and time again. Conversely, an application like Razoo’s Speed Granting in which $1,000 cash is given away twice a month for positive causes fails to experience similar growth. In the long run I firmly believe that these thought out applications will succeed but a look at the top 100 applications on Facebook proves otherwise. This is not to say that the top 100 applications are entirely junk, but a lot of them are just not useful. If you want to create a popular application you must make your application insight laughter, help people date more easily or help people show off. That’s it! While a few thousand tech people will take advantage of applications such as the Google reader application, Digg’s application or others, the most successful apps will cater to basic human desires. You can still gain thousands of users quickly but don’t expect to make a useful application that is going to rapidly gain millions of users. The one thing I wonder though is whether or not this will be what looses the tech people. After months pass with the same types of applications succeeding, will the professional users (and bloggers) get tired of using it? I don’t know. One thing I do know is that my mom has now joined Facebook and it has rapidly become a cultural phenomenon. Do you think the first adopters are going to leave the Facebook scene soon?
Creating A Successful Facebook Application
Posted by Nick O'Neill on August 6th, 2007 8:00 AM
I’m going to be writing about what makes a successful game app on Facebook in the coming week on my blog; http://www.creativetraction.com/blog. For now that means an app that appeals to the lowest common denominator. I agree that over the long haul we’ll see better apps rise to the top once things start to settle off and people become bored with the simple apps.
I think someone needs to make an app that raises the bar in terms of quality and what people expect in a Facebook app for it to become successful. Right now people aren’t expecting much because most of the apps are of less then stellar quality. Lots of developers are just pumping out the app and hoping it becomes successful, which doesn’t help.
Hey Nick,
It's all about the users, isn't it… What drew people to f8 for building/delivering apps was the huge user base, but that alone (the huge numbers of users) definitely doesn't make it the right place for every app. What the list of hyper-successful apps tells us is that Facebook is not yet a general delivery platform - it's mostly still a demographically-targeted channel, that is, young people looking to have fun (re-stating what you said)…. What this also means is that 5,000 users or 50,000 users might be just the right thing for certain apps - iow, that might be excellent penetration into the smaller fraction of FB users who fit the expected profile of a given app.
Luckily for the Zombies, iLike'rs, Poke'rs and Pee'rs, their apps hit the majority rule on FB…. that's fine.
BTW - Great blog - def top of the growing FB heap.
Hey Nick,
It’s all about the users, isn’t it… What drew people to f8 for building/delivering apps was the huge user base, but that alone (the huge numbers of users) definitely doesn’t make it the right place for every app. What the list of hyper-successful apps tells us is that Facebook is not yet a general delivery platform - it’s mostly still a demographically-targeted channel, that is, young people looking to have fun (re-stating what you said)…. What this also means is that 5,000 users or 50,000 users might be just the right thing for certain apps - iow, that might be excellent penetration into the smaller fraction of FB users who fit the expected profile of a given app.
Luckily for the Zombies, iLike’rs, Poke’rs and Pee’rs, their apps hit the majority rule on FB…. that’s fine.
BTW - Great blog - def top of the growing FB heap.
I don't think the first adapters are going to leave facebook.com until a better site pops up and I haven't seen one yet.
We're trying to figure out how/what to do regrading facebook apps at our site, myfirstpaycheck.com.
Thanks for the help.
I don’t think the first adapters are going to leave facebook.com until a better site pops up and I haven’t seen one yet.
We’re trying to figure out how/what to do regrading facebook apps at our site, myfirstpaycheck.com.
Thanks for the help.
Nick -
Unfortunately, Facebook is not an early adopter platform anymore, thus the early adopter apps (i.e. Google Reader, Digg, etc.) will not appeal to the masses of Facebook users (i.e. young, college/high school students).
It is shame that Facebook has the potential to be utilized for great utility and productivity purposes, yet the majority of users would rather throw virtual spaghetti at their friends.
Kudos to your point about how these application are still about human desire and psychology; just because highly talented developers are able to build a wildly efficient application doesn't mean that it is going to appeal and be utilized by the vast majority of Facebook users; which is a shame, really, because the truly great apps may never see the user base they actually deserve to command.
Cheers,
Brandon Mullins
Nick -
Unfortunately, Facebook is not an early adopter platform anymore, thus the early adopter apps (i.e. Google Reader, Digg, etc.) will not appeal to the masses of Facebook users (i.e. young, college/high school students).
It is shame that Facebook has the potential to be utilized for great utility and productivity purposes, yet the majority of users would rather throw virtual spaghetti at their friends.
Kudos to your point about how these application are still about human desire and psychology; just because highly talented developers are able to build a wildly efficient application doesn’t mean that it is going to appeal and be utilized by the vast majority of Facebook users; which is a shame, really, because the truly great apps may never see the user base they actually deserve to command.
Cheers,
Brandon Mullins
I agree it is very frustrating. We made pee on your friends as a complete joke, and found ourselves astonished at the rate of growth. Right now its on the front page of the applications directory. Its amazing that it even got in. We've spent weeks trying to promote our cars application (which is very functional and cool), but only have gotten it to 7000 users since mid July. Pee will get there in less than a week. Based on this we are definitely changing our future application strategy…
es
I agree it is very frustrating. We made pee on your friends as a complete joke, and found ourselves astonished at the rate of growth. Right now its on the front page of the applications directory. Its amazing that it even got in. We’ve spent weeks trying to promote our cars application (which is very functional and cool), but only have gotten it to 7000 users since mid July. Pee will get there in less than a week. Based on this we are definitely changing our future application strategy…
es