Half of facebook apps have under 350 installs
Published by Rodney Rumford February 11th, 2008 in Facebook, Facebook Applications.
Half of facebook applications have under 350 installs: There are over 16,000 applications on facebook. Over half of these applications ever get any form of even nominal traction. This screenshot from adonomics shows that a brand new application that is only 2 days old & already has more installations than 7277 (over half) of the applications on facebook. What makes the app grow? How did it move up faster than half of the entire facebook app ecosystem in terms of installs? We will save those explicit details for another post; but it should give you thing to start wrapping your head around.
What this means is that many applications never even got off the ground and could effectively be considered low noise and a wasted effort of time and money. Why are these apps never getting uptake? The reasons are many. Most likely the apps are flat and 1 dimensional and have no compelling psychological reason for users to engage and share the app with their friends.
When designing a facebook strategy for apps you need some very compelling reasons to make users CARE. It needs to do something for them that they find useful, entertaining, share worthy or compelling. Most apps are missing 1, 2, 3 or all 4 of these critical aspects. Thus they effectively remain in the dustbin of application minutia on facebook. Lack of strategy guarantees lack of performance.
The highlighted apps shown below are relatively new apps that have high engagement percentage rates which means that they are growing rapidly from an installation perspective. One of these apps is only 48 hours old and growing without forced invites. Can you guess which one?
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5 Responses to “Half of facebook apps have under 350 installs”
- 1 Pingback on Feb 11th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
- 2 Pingback on Feb 13th, 2008 at 10:02 am
http://webcommunityforum.com/2008/02/applications-with-under-350-installs-may-not-be-a-waste-of-money/#comment-10018
Jason you are right.
“I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll end up saying it again (it’s not that original, people just forget): getting to the right audience is far more important than getting to a large audience.”
I was speaking in very general terms about apps. Hitting the high value targeted audience like you guys did with your app is actually a viable strategy.
to my other point… “When designing a facebook strategy for apps you need some very compelling reasons to make users CARE. It needs to do something for them that they find useful, entertaining, share worthy or compelling. Most apps are missing 1, 2, 3 or all 4 of these critical aspects. Thus they effectively remain in the dustbin of application minutia on facebook. Lack of strategy guarantees lack of performance.”
Marketing 101. Know your audience.
Cheers!
This is interesting. Our application, My Day Rating ( http://apps.facebook.com/mydayrating ) is doing better than over half of the applications on Facebook if we use these numbers, as it has over 500 installs, but it has struggled to find any traction despite most people we have asked giving positive feedback about it.
I wouldn’t consider My Day Rating flat or one dimensional, and some people are using it every day, but clearly there does seem to be something not quite right in the mix.
“getting to the right audience is far more important than getting to a large audience.”
very true.