The Longtail of Facebook
Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 6th, 2007 1:27 PMO’Reilly has published a new report covering the Facebook platform. There are definitely some interesting statistics in the report. 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications on the platform and only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users. Slide, RockYou and Facebook are the three largest application suppliers. The categories with the most active user bases are gaming, sports and messaging. The events and dating categories followed right behind.
For those looking to develop an extremely popular application, your odds are really low. While there is some impressive data, there is some discouraging information for those looking to build a hit:
Many people are familiar with Pareto’s 20/80 rule. As Ben Lorica notes, for Facebook applications, the rule can be restated as 74/1 or 87/2. The concentration of active usage in top applications is more extreme than Pareto’s 20/80 rule, with one percent of the applications generating 74 percent of usage and 2 percent of the applications generating 87 percent of usage. The top 20 percent of the applications generate 98 percent of active usage.
While discouraging, there is still an opportunity to build applications with a sizeable user base. The report suggests that the most important factor in marketing your application is to “optimize the Feed notification messages and application events that generate News Feed and Mini-Feed messages.” So yes, news feed optimization is still one of the primary factors in developing a successful application.
One other interesting finding in the report is that Facebook has not yet become the web’s operating system. This is not really anything new but the report suggests that the plaform runs the risk of competing with application developers. While not an immediate threat, the threat exists for the future. If you want to read more about the report, go check out O’Reilly’s post on the report.
(4.64 out of 5)
(4.22 out of 5)
October 7th, 2007 at 4:03 am
if 84 apps are getting any kind of usage, and there are now 5,242 apps, that leaves 5,158 apps that aren’t being used?!
In other words, it’s a bad day to be a Facebook Fanboy?
October 7th, 2007 at 5:03 am
if 84 apps are getting any kind of usage, and there are now 5,242 apps, that leaves 5,158 apps that aren’t being used?!
In other words, it’s a bad day to be a Facebook Fanboy?
October 7th, 2007 at 10:13 am
[...] Mobile Review wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptO Reilly has published a new report covering the Facebook platform. There are definitely some interesting statistics in the report. 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications on the platform and only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users. Slide, RockYou and Facebook are the three largest application suppliers. The categories with the most active user bases are gaming, sports and messaging. The events and dating categories followed right behind. For those looking to develop [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 11:14 am
As I said at Community Next, 90% of applications have 1000 or fewer daily active users.
October 7th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
As I said at Community Next, 90% of applications have 1000 or fewer daily active users.
October 8th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Jesse,
90% of 5,000 is 4,500. If you had to put a monetary value on any one of those apps, about what would it be? $20? 50?! (I wouldn’t pay five cents for one, but maybe others feel different?)
October 8th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Jesse,
90% of 5,000 is 4,500. If you had to put a monetary value on any one of those apps, about what would it be? $20? 50?! (I wouldn’t pay five cents for one, but maybe others feel different?)
October 8th, 2007 at 9:26 am
I disagree with “For those looking to develop an extremely popular application, your odds are really low. ” Merely because, you don’t know it until you build it. If all developers were to take that statement to heart….It would be pretty quiet out there, and you wouldn’t have anything to write about.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
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October 8th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I disagree with “For those looking to develop an extremely popular application, your odds are really low. ” Merely because, you don’t know it until you build it. If all developers were to take that statement to heart….It would be pretty quiet out there, and you wouldn’t have anything to write about.