While RockYou and Slide have been battling for the top developer spot with their Facebook applications, the recent changes made to Facebook’s design have caused an uproar in terms of applications’ status, distribution and permeation.
As Nick noted earlier this month, both RockYou and Slide began to recover from the drop in traffic the Facebook redesign had on their respective applications, and are back to battling it out for the top spot yet again. Nearly two weeks ago it looked as though RockYou would overtake Slide in terms of active montly users, and today we see that this is still the case.
RockYou‘s top app SuperWall continues to grow, along with about half of RockYou’s other applications coming from its developent team, with SuperWall reaching about 21 million monthly active users. On the other hand, all of Slide‘s applications are declining in traffic, dropping 4% in the past week. The rate of growth is slower for RockYou than Slide’s rate of decline, yet RockYou’s steady growth doesn’t appear to be leveling off quite yet.
It may also be important to note that Causes, creator of the number one Facebook app, is declining in traffic, having dropped 9% in the past week, and leveling off at just over 18 million monthly active users. Nevertheless, traffic for game developer Zynga has been on a steady increase these past few weeks, showing little fluctuation in its growth trajectory, yet still appearing third behind RockYou and Slide.
So how could Slide continue its head-to-head battle against RockYou? Well RockYou still has a great deal more applications on Facebook than Slide, a number of additional changes made on Facebook’s end may still have a residual effect on some of Slide’s applications. Around the same time as the Facebook redesign, the Facebook Platform also shut down Slide’s best performing application, Top Friends, sending a double blow to Slide’s success as a Facebook app developer.
A third factor for Slide’s downturn could also be the launching of Facebook’s own top friends option, removing users’ need to turn to a third party developer to show top friends. Finding more ways to overcome these recent setbacks may help Slide find its way to the top of the developer food chain.
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Congrats! What's the prize?
Comment by Michael Lazerow — December 12, 2008 @ 7:40 am
Virtual applause!
Comment by Anonymous — December 12, 2008 @ 9:45 am
I personally don't use any facebook applications as developers don't seem to be privacy conscious and only want to 'Pull my and my contacts profiles and information."
I personally boycott any application which asks this… Sure some may need some of the info in their program to be functional, but I don't trust this at all. I looked into facebook development, and this is the developers choice apparently.
I don't know any of these developers… but don't trust any of them one iota, apps can be made without pulling all your 'private' information, they just aren't being made because people are accepting this!?! Stand-up to this bullying people and just delete all your apps… They are not THAT great really are they?
They always claim to save some whales or puppies but that is just a smokescreen… What do they REALLY achieve out of this? Spread the word people that Facebook Apps can be developed without needing ALL of your details so lets stand up to this scam…
Why trust some developer you don't even know, from somewhere where they may not even have proper laws?
How do you know he is not from Nigeria and adding you and all of your friends info to his database, planning personalised email and facebook scams to target you and your friends in the future?!?!?
Yeah, I may be paranoid…. But that DOESN'T mean, that they AREN'T out to get you. Sorry Facebook, that pathetic couple of line disclaimer says it all.
Shame on you for allowing your network to develop this way… Will we see it get exploited for organised crime by an evil App developer?
I am very interested in peoples comments here – particularly application developers who know the ins and outs of the Facebook API.
Comment by Liam Vickery — December 13, 2008 @ 7:03 pm