Application Evolution: Some Apps Turn Spammy? I have always been an advocate of applications starting simple and then evolving greater depth of functionality once they have traction.

This is normally a good thing. The exception is when the facebook app evolves into something that users have no desire for. I will use the most popular facebook application in terms of installs (24.7 million) and engagement (over 2.7 million daily): Top Friends as an example.

This application started off simple enough. It was a way for me to classify and select my top friends and use it as a customizable badge on my profile page. Simple, useful, clean and easy. I use it for navigation to see my top friends profile pages.

But now the application has added functionality that is more of an annoyance than anything. Friends (not even top friends that I have chosen) are sending me tons of emails about their mood change (I could care less), or sending me drinks (If I wanted a drink sending application I would use the facebook Booze Mail Application), who I am compatible with or doing mobile chat. The trade-off is not worth it to me so I am uninstalling the application.

Now I realize that I can simply turn off email messaging from the application and this annoyance would stop. But the point here is functionality creep that pushes the app past the tipping point of value vs. annoyance. Top Friends is way past the annoyance tipping point and has been for a while for me. Be careful with adding too much functionality to an application that users will find annoying.

On a positive note I will commend Top Friends at being masters at viral marketing. If you look at how they default some settings to send a drink to all of your friends suddenly 850 of my friends get a notification if I was not paying close attention. They also give me new drinks to send if I invite more people (very smart). Smart for viral growth for sure. Annoying if you are a user and don’t care about this functionality (me). The fact that they have the number one application on facebook speaks volumes about what they are doing and best practices for viral growth.

My main concern here is the user experience/annoyance at the price of viral growth. Do all these additional email notifications drive users crazy. Yes. Is it effective at driving engagement. Yes. Should facebook be concerned? Somewhat.

The fact that this drink functionality continues to have the ability to clog my mini-feed with this drink sending activity is also very frustrating.

I am sure that lot’s of facebook users find this increased functionality of use to them; otherwise this app would not continue to grow as it does daily. I just don’t happen to be one of them.

Share this on: