Alex and I have been discussing the design of a new Facebook app a lot recently, and Alex keeps telling me that we need to “put all the viral loops into place,” somewhat parroting the advice of FB App “Mafia” creator Siqi Chen (who has some good articles about FB apps on this site.)
This is a valid concern, as numerous books about the subject have been written on the topic - “Unleashing the Ideavirus” by Seth Godin is a pretty good example. The gist, for those who are not familiar with the concept, is that one of the best ways to spread the word about a product is by building advertising of the product into use of the product… in other words products that, by virtue of their very use, communicate the brand or the usefulness of the product to non-users - Hotmail’s ad at the bottom of every email, a Hallmark card, the Tiffany’s bag, etc.
“Unleashing” also notes that as this concept of advertising becomes more common, it will (as all forms of advertising) become less effective and companies will have to come up with increasingly novel and creative ways to make their ideas go ‘viral.’
Well, more than half a decade after the book was ‘unleashed’ onto the world, Facebook opened up their web site to outside developers… and simultaneously found a way to institutionalize viral marketing.
This is not necessarily a good thing.
The first FB apps were the simplest and stupidest ideas - SuperPoke! spreads itself because all it really does is to inform people that it exists, and the same goes for Zombies and Werewolves and Vampires and pretty soon we’ll probably have Robots, Ninjas, Pirates, and Aliens (”You’ve been abducted! Click here to abduct your friends and perform hideous experiments on their lower intestines!”)… they don’t serve any purpose except to announce to the world that you have an app, and there’s no increasing satisfaction tied to increasing use besides accumulating points.
Now here’s the problem - they’re using the basic concepts of viral marketing, and making products out of viral marketing itself. Facebook realized this problem early on, and attempted to control it by limiting invites to new apps to ten per day per app per user. They’re also going to be discouraging user-hoarding by useless apps by reporting metrics besides simply how many users a given app has - also a good idea.
But it’s too late - the process has already begun: As Godin indirectly predicted, the abuse that has already occurred has lead to a devaluing of Facebook’s built-in viral marketing and a decreasing trust by people in the usefulness of their own friends’ invites. Now, the people whose friends ignore their constant bulletins on myspace can also have all the fun of having their constant app invites on Facebook ignored as well… and there are many! Besides the aforementioned “bite” apps, there are the comparison apps (Flixter’s movie quiz, Compare Friends, etc.) to try to make us all feel like we shouldn’t *really* be friends (or something), as well as apps like My Questions, which repackage the most basic functions of Facebook (the Wall, for instance) and try to convince us that something new has happened (and invite our friends to experience this amazing, brand new application!)
This leads me to a big, important question: If apps need to try so hard to spread themselves based on the “Ideavirus” model, why take it so literally? It seems like the model here is the common cold, spread almost uncontrollably… and nobody really needs it. Whatever happened to confidence in product?
Refer to Alex’s previous post - he just read Masters of Doom - and consider what make id Software so successful: Shareware. id Software may have produced great, groundbreaking games, but Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake spread because they were great products… and id had enough confidence in them to release a full third of all of them for free. Scott Miller (from 3D Realms, which at that time was Apogee) distributed Keen and Wolf3D for id, and did everything he could to get the demos into peoples’ hands. So what if they were giving away ten hours of gameplay for free? It was SO GOOD that people wanted more, and enough were willing to pay for it. Scott Miller KNEW the plan would work - he actually spent money to give the shareware products away for free.
Compare this to the model of most Facebook apps trying desperately to gain users: Most of them require you to add the application before you even try it out (even going so far as to make the default page when you click on the app into the “Add” screen if you don’t already have it installed) , and demanding that you send invites to friends sometimes even before you’ve finished exploring the basic functionality of the app.
As an aspiring Facebook Application developer, I propose a few rules for Facebook applications, which I plan to do my best to follow:
- Allow the user to try at least a third of the application’s primary function before they must install.
- Value user satisfaction over install count.
- Provide a true benefit and satisfaction to users who utilize the social and viral aspects of the application.
- Always be honest - label all install and invite links, and label all links that lead outside of Facebook.
In many ways, these are the most basic rules of creating a product or application in other contexts as well. However, as in any new medium, the initial burst of activity features a distinct lack of easily identifiable quality products, since the measure of ‘good’ is hard to track and users are so bombarded with poor products that they are hesitant about spreading positive word of mouth for products which could turn out to be a waste of everybody’s time.
Of course, there will always be standout leaders in a brand new market… but Facebook itself proves that a quality product that does not force itself upon users but instead relies on quality can stand up better for the long haul than an inferior product whose developers treat the industry as simply a race to accumulate users.
So, now you’ve read this entire article. If you liked it, you’ll send it to friends. If they like it, I win and you win - my name is spread, and your friends will thank you for sharing the treat. Instead, what if I forced you to invite your friends to read this article as a precondition for reading it? If 10% of you decided to forge ahead and read the article anyway (and spam your friends about it through my stealthy Yahoo contact invite system or whatever), you may enjoy the article, and a few of your friends may read it, but for the 90% who don’t take the next step every time they’re invited, there is a lot of ill will built up against me AND the users who invited their friends who did NOT read the article.
Thus, if I had forced you to invite friends before reading the article, I might initially accumulate more readers, but the long term effect is one of distrust and resentment.
Actually, this whole thing was a ploy - while reading this article, you were secretly abducted by aliens. To avoid a hideous, painful, and vaguely-medical procedure, you must invite twenty friends to read Startupism.com right now!
Aaron Nemoyten just moved to Berkeley and is currently working on what will hopefully become an awesome and, yes, viral facebook application.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:27 am
I wholeheartedly agree. As I learned more and more about the facebook platform in the past several months, a certain philosophy began to emerge for building solid apps that make long-term business sense, and are not just ephemeral ‘here I am’ apps.
If you have entrepreneurial aspirations, like I do, the Facebook platform is an amazing opportunity! (Although you would have fared better to have caught it early on.) Apps can do two great things: bring you money (through ads or monetizing), and bring you eyeballs (so when you come out with a substantial product, service or site, you have a userbase that trusts you and likes you, and will actually listen when you tell them all you’ve made something new.)
That said, the apps have to be USEFUL. Zombies, etc. spread like wildfire but if people had a bigger UNINSTALL button, they’d be gone pretty fast, too. They’d be like waves of fads passing through cyberspace.
There are so many opportunities to build useful apps. A couple months ago I began advocating to everyone that the # of users is only POTENTIAL for greatness in an app. The real meat is how often they come back. Now, this is not necessarily proportional to the amount of work you put in — some really simple apps can be addicting to many people and they love using them, whereas complex apps might used only rarely. Games, if executed correctly, will always have a fan base and you can get lots of traffic. By way of example, Siqi Chen did a great job with Mafia. Look at all the people using it all the time. Now that he has a solid user base, he can GROW.
I have ideas for about 4 or 5 apps that I want to make over the next several months. They are part of a business strategy, and I’m starting a company just to make facebook apps. Some people are interested in investing in the company already, having heard about the apps. I daresay, the difference between my proposed apps and many on facebook is that they will provide lots of value to the user, more than those of Slide, etc.
However, many people will want to grab those users and sell their apps to the highest bidder. Do you think this business model will work? Thoughts?
August 31st, 2007 at 8:45 am
Good insight, and very true.
The Facebook Platform hype has peaked and this is the beginning of a steady decline in value.
August 31st, 2007 at 10:45 am
Aaron, you make really great points in this. We’re definitely trying to figure out a good balance between utility and virality.
We built a College Search app (http://apps.facebook.com/collegetoolkit) and have since added college quizzes to try and encourage our users to spread the word.
Great insight… keep it up!
August 31st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I’d like to thank you guys for the feedback!
To respond to Gregory, yes, it is about providing value to the user. And to respond to Zuckerborg, I think you’d very, very mistaken.
To combine these responses into one: As the platform matures, the percentage of useless applications created will decline, but the overall use of the apps should go up. Right now, users and developers are testing the waters… and just like the early days of the internet, there are scams, there are useless sites, and there are truly useful products.
And, of course, the apps that ’stick’ will provide the most value to users. There are many developers who do not see this as a two-way street - the goal is to accumulate users in any way possible, cash in on ads, and then get out. That strategy can work, and people will make money, but those in it for the long haul can reap far more rewards. It may be a while before users truly believe that Facebook apps WILL be useful, but just like the internet, word of mouth and viral usage will drive the spread moreso than any other factors (including, sadly, the quality of the product!).
Okay, most of this is - and should be - obvious.
We need to be patient. There will be incredibly useful apps that slip through the cracks to begin with because users are not prepared for them, and do not expect facebook apps to be useful. Developers will piss and moan about it.
Despite this, the truth is that Facebook has accomplished much of what other sites have been trying to do for ten years: It has become an internet portal for people, it serves as many useful functions as many other sites do individually, and it is a hub for other applications and uses.
Perhaps I will write an article to elaborate on that later.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
for the most part, I agree with the article. However, I have a few random ramblings that I’d like to bring up.
my question is whether facebook users really want more ‘value’ to the website. Most of the people in my general acquaintance in college dislike applications. the reason why people use facebook is still primarily, and probably exclusively for their friends: the wall, messaging, photos, etc.. the reason why all the stupid, silly applications are the successful ones is perhaps because the average users isn’t in want of anything more than what facebook already provides. what all these feature laden applications do is exacerbate the trend that fb started– by alienating its users by making facebook as a whole more and more complex. just look at the last metric– the % active users. this makes a vauge amount of sense to developers, and means absolutely nothing to an average facebook user, who is looking at the application about page. And i assure you, the average facebook user is not a developer.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Entirely agree with your commentary Aaron. The apps without utility will fall by the wayside. Your inference to the Internet boom-bust-then slow boom again is bang on. In developing our app (Neighborhoods), we fought with the impulse to create these tools that force you to invite friends before using it and decide against it. We figured that you probably only get one shot at the user and we want the people who are motivated to use the app.
We have had very good growth (85,000+ in 30 days since release) and our retention is high. We believe the retention is high because there is a long-term utility to the concept of interacting with individuals in close geographic proximity to you. Further, the apps utility grows with each additional users. However, sometimes slow and steady hurts because we live in move fast, in and out culture.
August 31st, 2007 at 8:36 pm
iDescribe
iDescribe allows you to non-anonymously describe your friends in 5 words from a ready list of words that we’ve selected for you. The words that you are described with are then displayed on your profile in a neat way, with the most common words appearing first to offer an honest look at how others really view you.
http://apps.facebook.com/idescribe/
August 31st, 2007 at 9:07 pm
check out this app
http://apps.facebook.com/suggester/
September 1st, 2007 at 11:25 am
Excellent points all throughout the article.
I developed a simple two-player Reversi app and was pleasantly surprised to have over a 40% active users ratio.
Meanwhile, my utility app (To-Do List) has a ration of less than 10%.
The new metrics really help show what applications are actually being used, and which have massive installs but are never touched again.
September 1st, 2007 at 11:51 am
To answer Yao, I think the answer is yes they do want value, but they don’t know it yet. It goes along with how the internet has grown - there were a lot of useful sites that couldn’t attract enough users. Now a lot of those services and products are coming back, but they’re profitable. The problem is that growth of such things is generally organic, NOT fueled by advertising.
Think of the most useful applications… even outside of the internet. Photoshop, for instance, did not become the number one program for editing photos overnight - I’m sure that at first, designers and photographers thought that editing images on a computer was a stupid idea.
The whole platform needs to feel legitimate before people are willing to accept it as being useful. That will come with time.
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:09 am
this is a kinda slipshod reply at 4am, but nonetheless, i’ll just make a quick blow-by-blow response to your reply.
starting off, you say that users want value but don’t know it. while this may sound true all the time, my challenge is this: is there some point when users truly do not want any more value? my answer to this would be yes. (most of the big problems solved on the internet, search perhaps: google came along and pretty much dominated the scene, however none of google’s subsequent services have gotten quite the traction. video and youtube perhaps; the function of youtube hasn’t expanded for a long time, and in my opinion it will not for a long time to come, just because people don’t want/need any more out of the service). If you are with agreement with me on that, then the question is has facebook reached this point where people aren’t demanding any more value?
i’m also going to disagree that useful sites in the past that couldn’t attract users are gaining traction and becoming popular now. in my knowledge, this is untrue and i would love to hear if you have any examples of these to share with me. the truth is that ‘web 2.0′ hasn’t developed many new money-making models and still relies primarily on advertising.
i don’t feel the photoshop analogy is a valid one because of the dissimilar circumstances. in order for it to work, people must all have been buying computers to do word processing alone, and photoshop must have been the outsider trying to convince these word processing users to try photo editing. however, the reality is that the central reason for computing’s popularity is its ability to perform all these different tasks include photoshop. in the situation of facebook, i might liken photoshop to the photo-tagging utility, which is similarly vastly popular.
one of the most important parts of building an internet prescence is branding and building a brand and brand loyalty. this example is a bit faulty, but say if i made food fight and it became successful. it’s trivial for the next person to imitate me and emulate my success in the exact same manner. facebook platform has made it easier for us to garner users, but it has not made it any easier for us to succeed.
based on what i’m seeing right now, i think applications has been detrimental to facebook. i will continue to write for it, but i still remain somewhat skeptical.
September 9th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
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