New Measurement for Facebook Applications is Greatly Improved
Published by Rodney Rumford August 29th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Applications, Facebook News.I posted earlier this week that “The times are a changin’” as to how facebook measures and displays applications geared towards “Engagement”. The change for measurement that brings to the surface engagement metrics & measurement was just implemented. My verdict on the new measurement for facebook applications: Great Execution!
ILike is engaging and has high daily active user numbers, as well as a high percentage. This is the ideal combination. (This is on the application “About” page when users go to add the App.)
Here is what has changed in facebook application stats:
* You no longer see raw number of application installs. This is good because people obsess with high application install numbers (which is not the only measurement).
* Number of daily active users
* Percentage of active users
New Tabs in the Application Directory
* Most Activity
* Most Active Users
What does this all mean to users and application developers: Build more engaging and useful applications and users will reward you by using your application more frequently. These following screen shots illustrate what I have been saying since the beginning of the platform launch. 1 dimensional apps will suffer as users tire of them (the life-cycle might be around 180 days). Now behave and quit biting me: Notice the 3% engagement rate? That is about as low as I have found for an app that has been live for more than 45 days.
And quit throwing your food.
And do your puzzles: Notice the 9% engagement rate for PuzzleBee. 
I reviewed this PuzzleBee app and gave it 4.5 stars when it first launched over 60 days ago. Why? Because it engaged users and if you like puzzles it is a kick butt application that has full integration with facebook photos and provides a great user experience that lasts and keeps people returning for a nice entertainment experience. The app is also social and viral which are other critical components of application success. More engaging apps will have better traction and a greater percentage of active users.
The side benefit of all of this encouraging better applications for facebook app owners is this: Facebook rewards you now with nice placement in the directory. The new tabs allow users to see more engaging applications more easily.
It also allows newly launched applications an opportunity to gain some visibility when they are moving up. When an app first launches the percentage of active users can be quite high for a while. This will allow apps to come to the surface and for users to find them easily. Bad apps will fall to the bottom. 
Tell me what you think of these changes.
Here are the new “engaging” tabs in the Facebook Application Directory
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Altura Ventures, the world’s first facebook-only VC firm, agrees with Rodney and appluads Facebook for taking this step to push developers towards building more engaging applications.
As they say: “if you can measure it, you can manage it.” Up until now, Facebook only measured (or rather only published) the net number of App Users. This led many developers to focus solely on this one metric — in fact, even the number of installs vs. uninstalls per day was hidden.
Jesse Farmer, CTO of Adonomics, an Altura Ventures portfolio company, is enhancing the Adonomics API to allow app developers to begin to track a whole host of metrics and to truly measure and manage the complete lifecycle of their users. This will include the integration of the new stats that Facebook is now publishing on a daily basis in addition to the time-based graphs that Adonomics (formerly Appaholic) presents to show the history of each app.
I’m pleased to see these moves by Facebook towards more transparency in their metrics. With increased transparency will come increased trust from advertisers who simply want to spend their dollars wisely. In addition, this is yet another sign that Facebook is taking care of their most valuable asset: the attention span of their user base.