Facebook Changes Public Application Metrics Again

August 5th, 2008

By Justin Smith

Facebook released an update to the application directory today, changing the published engagement metric for applications from daily active users to monthly active users. The change marks Facebook’s third iteration on published application metrics, reflecting Facebook’s increasing desire for developers to adopt a more long-term view of application engagement.

To recap briefly:

In the beginning, Facebook published the number of total application installs, ranking applications by those which the most users had engaged with at least once.
Then, Facebook switched the primary published metric to daily active users, ranking apps by those which users visited most on any given day. (Facebook continued to publish the daily active %, allowing third parties to extrapolate total installs.)
Starting today, Facebook is now publishing monthly active users instead of daily active users, ranking apps by those which the most users have visited over the last 30 days, saying it wants to help developers “focus on building longer-term engagement.”

However, with the switch to monthly active users, Facebook is no longer publishing a monthly active % – removing the notion of an “install” from published stats. Going forward, developers and observers will only have access to “monthly active” numbers – “percent active” will no longer be available.

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4 Responses to “Facebook Changes Public Application Metrics Again”

Inside Facebook » Which Facebook Applications Really Are the Most Engaging? A Look at MAU & MAU%. Says:
August 6th, 2008 at 8:25 am
[...] updated application engagement stats published in the directory yesterday, changing the published engagement metric for applications from daily active users to monthly [...]
Most used Facebook Applications, charts « Website Marketing and Advertising Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
[...] Facebook updated application engagement stats published in the directory yesterday, changing the published engagement metric for applications from daily active users to monthly active users, and removing the active % altogether. [...]
MySpace is Only Hindering Its Own Platform by Not Providing Better Public Metrics to Developers Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 8:56 am
[...] a total user number was a “rather crude metric,” and switched to providing daily (and then monthly) active user numbers instead. [...]
Vicki Says:
December 1st, 2009 at 3:22 am
I realise this article is very old however I am just curious to learn whether total installs and MAU conversion rate % (Total monthly active users/ total installs) can be measured in FB Insights.

I am trying to understand why MAU would be a meaningful metric to an app developer when a MAU can be counted by someone visiting simply visiting the canvas page. Surely a better measure of success would be to measure the amount of active installs (% of those who have allowed the app) out of the total MAU.

Please can anyone shed some light on thia further.

Thanks