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Over the past few weeks, one of the fastest growing applications on the Facebook platform has been Snowball Wars. The application has seen exponential growth and a quick look at their growth chart (shown below) illustrates that the application’s growth has almost been perfectly exponential. It leads me to wonder, do people really want to play Snowball Wars?
While developers often search for a quick way to attract users, I have to assume that this application is using some other strategy for attracting users. After browsing through my RSS feed reader this morning, I found at least one person who said that without taking any action, snowball war requests were sent to many of their friends.
Perhaps users really want to engage in Snowball Wars on Facebook but if that’s really what constitutes an “engaging application”, one has to be a little bit skeptical of the potential of the Facebook platform. Personally, I have used a few useful and engaging applications but it makes me think twice when applications like Snowball Wars and random quiz applications are continuously among the fastest growing Facebook applications.
Have you been hit by one of the fast moving snowballs recently? Did the application spam your friends or were you genuinely entertained by throwing a snowball at your friends? Aren’t these the applications that people mocked when the platform launched over a year and a half ago?
I no longer install any applications or causes at all.
They are mostly useless, ask me to spam my friends, and, really, have very little point.
Shaun Dakin
I actually do! It’s something simple and fun like a poke for the winter holidays.
I’ve seen such weird Facebook ads on that I’m not remotely interested to checking out (e.g., colon cleansing, the Bi-Polar Center) that until I fully understand Facebook’s advertising placement/targeting system, I’m not accepting any outside applications. I’m still exploring what information is being gathered, who is using it, etc.
I had this happen to me - After allowing access for the application, i was told by a friend that they had received a request that I did not send. Who knows how many other people received the same request.
I notified Facebook of this incident. And honestly, I am wondering how something like this is allowed. This was days ago and clearly the app is still running.
Also quite interesting: There are actually at least three identical “Snowball Wars” applications out there:
- http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4902358249
- http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=8476307935
- http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=38273254549
This could be the key to the surprising growth of “Snowball Wars”. Maybe the application developer (who is it anyways?) uses this “cloning” strategy to circumvent Facebook’s limits on viral channel usage.
I’m not certain how this is done in detail, but I suspect that users are sent back and forth between these applications without them realizing. I received (identical) notifications from all three of the applications listed above and was asked to authorize all of them. That’s what eventually made me wonder. But who else pays attention to the occasional request to authorize an application? Especially when you think that you’ve already done so.
This is speculative, but I believe that having a user authorize several of your applications gives you the ability to use Facebook’s viral channels more extensively. You may be able to use some of the applications specifically to send out notifications, some of which might be considered spam. Or you can think of strategies to “load-balance” viral-channel usage. Does this make sense? Or are there other explanations for “application cloning”?
Any comments on that? Do you know any other applications that follow similar strategies? I’d be interested to learn more on this topic!
they are also incentivizing invites… i.e. throw X number of snowballs at your friends to unlock this next snowball.
This is clearly a violation, but facebook clearly is too slow to move on any of this stuff.
They need a team of 5 guys whose sole job it is to punish and ban these types of apps. This is getting ridiculous.
Why would I give away access to my facebook friends’ contact information in order to receive a picture of a kumquat or any of this nonsense? Time wasted clicking ignore application because people couldn’t be bothered to uncheck my name from a viral transmission screen. Do these ‘friends’ who have become spammers send me a personal note or anything else? It’s beyond me. I did the vampire bite the first day on facebook. Now it’s all block and ignore except for one or two apps that make sense and contribute more than clip art cupcake data mining. A few good apps, like Causes and my Linkedin profile. Ben Stock of Brainpower xoxox
They are also tricking around with different variations of the same name. I have blocked
(frost) Snowball Wars
(cold) Snowball Wars
(ice) Snowball Wars
(fun) Snowball Wars
(brrr) Snowball Wars
Snowball Fight!
Ok, so (frost) snowball fight has spamed my computer. It keeps opening a website all the time, offering phony spy protection. How do I stop this?