Kara Swisher has a post up arguing that Facebook is still for kids. She uses a graph which charts the number of applications for each category. On that chart, the “Just for Fun” category dominates all other categories. This has been one of the biggest challenges for brands entering the Facebook platform. Want to brand your high-end service or product to consumers? Facebook may not be the place for that.
This is why a number of companies are turning toward LinkedIn and figuring out when their platform will launch on a larger scale. They may not end up being a comparable platform to Facebook as individual companies may be forced to approach LinkedIn directly. This is one way that the company can generate the high CPMs that were being buzzed about in the blogosphere earlier this week.
Facebook still has its place though. If you think about various marketing campaigns and who they are targeting, which platform would you be most likely to launch an application on if you are going to advertise the application on the back of a cereal box? I’d probably say MySpace. What about if you are going to advertise the application around your college campus and on your college’s website? Facebook.
Kara may just be right that Facebook is for entertaining and more engaging applications which are less focused on utility. While there are plenty of utility based applications, most of them have not seen success. What about that golden application that I’ve talked about over the past year? Maybe the golden application doesn’t exist and in reality, the golden applications on Facebook are really just highly engaging and fun.
Do you think utility applications will be successful on Facebook?
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I think that a better metric would look at how many users there are for each "category" of application, and how many of them are "active users" as designated by Facebook. Kara's point may be valid, but it is based on a cursory glance.
Comment by alicia — May 2, 2008 @ 8:14 am
Isn't "Just For Fun" the default category when you setup a new Facebook Application? I find that in a lot of applications I have built for the web, that the default values in forms get a high count just because people don't want to take the time to choose them.
Comment by David Patton — May 2, 2008 @ 10:06 am
FaceBook & MySpace were both created as essentially 'fun' sites. Is that so bad as long as they're popular enough? The applications most probably reflect what is in demand from FaceBook users.Maybe it was too aspirational to term Facebook a utility or maybe it just hasn't achieved that yet. Maybe the majority of its users want fun & don't want a utility.
Comment by Maggy Young — May 2, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
I think that a better metric would look at how many users there are for each “category” of application, and how many of them are “active users” as designated by Facebook. Kara’s point may be valid, but it is based on a cursory glance.
Comment by alicia — May 2, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
FaceBook & MySpace were both created as essentially 'fun' sites. Is that so bad as long as they're popular enough? The applications most probably reflect what is in demand from FaceBook users.
Maybe it was too aspirational to term Facebook a utility or maybe it just hasn't achieved that yet. Maybe the majority of its users want fun & don't want a utility.
Comment by Maggy Young — May 2, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
Isn’t “Just For Fun” the default category when you setup a new Facebook Application? I find that in a lot of applications I have built for the web, that the default values in forms get a high count just because people don’t want to take the time to choose them.
Comment by David Patton — May 2, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
The entire games industry would be for kids and "useless" by this definition, as would fiction literature and non-fiction literature like US Weekly and People.
This just shows that the real action on Facebook is playing games with your friends, and the gaming industry has taken notice. If it is of interest, the Social Gaming Summit on June 13th in SF (http://www.socialgamingsummit.com) will cover the trends in this emerging category of online gaming.
Comment by David — May 2, 2008 @ 5:06 pm
That analysis s counting all applications since the application platform launched. Initially the "Just for Fun" category was probably the most popular by far. What category has had the most growth lately would be a better analysis. This would show how Facebook is changing, if at all.As alicia pointed out, you also need to look at active users. How many applications in the "Just for Fun" category are failed and/or abandoned applications?
Comment by Brent — May 5, 2008 @ 3:39 am
That analysis s counting all applications since the application platform launched. Initially the "Just for Fun" category was probably the most popular by far. What category has had the most growth lately would be a better analysis. This would show how Facebook is changing, if at all.
As alicia pointed out, you also need to look at active users. How many applications in the "Just for Fun" category are failed and/or abandoned applications?
Comment by Brent — May 5, 2008 @ 4:39 am
The existence of "fun" applications does not discount the variety of uses a platform can provide.
Is the home PC for kids because of the tens of thousands of games that have been released for decades? It seems like her argument would eventually lead her to announce the internet is just for lechers and teens too…
And I know many people that use Facebook frequently and deeply but hardly ever interact with applications.
Comment by dbrowell — May 6, 2008 @ 5:41 am
The existence of “fun” applications does not discount the variety of uses a platform can provide.
Is the home PC for kids because of the tens of thousands of games that have been released for decades? It seems like her argument would eventually lead her to announce the internet is just for lechers and teens too…
And I know many people that use Facebook frequently and deeply but hardly ever interact with applications.
Comment by dbrowell — May 6, 2008 @ 8:41 am
its good
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