Inside Facebook

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.

So given that yesterday was the last day that total active installs and daily active users were published for the directory, Inside Facebook has combined that data with Facebook’s newly released monthly active user data to figure out which applications have been the most engaging on a total monthly active users and a monthly active % basis over the last 30 days.  In the future, this kind of analysis will be impossible, so this is a one time opportunity to combine the two data sources and produce meaningful results.

There are a couple of different interesting angles to look at the data here:

1) Total Monthly Active Users – Which applications are engaging the most unique users over the last 30 days?

2) Monthly Active % – Which applications have engaged the greatest percentage of their installed user base over the last 30 days?

3) MAU/DAU Ratio – Which applications tend to engage different users on a day to day basis (high MAU/DAU Ratio), vs. the same users on a day to day basis (low MAU/DAU Ratio)?

Here are the results. For each graph, I’ve included the top 20 applications. Keep in mind that these numbers are in general quite high when compared with web app retention metrics in general.

1. Top 20 Facebook Applications by Total Monthly Active Users

2) Top 20 Facebook Applications by Monthly Active %

(and, as a side note, those applications in the top 100 by total installs with the lowest Monthly Active %)

3) Facebook Applications with Highest MAU/DAU Ratio

And those amongst the top 100 by total installs with the lowest MAU/DAU Ratio:

Some interesting observations:

• The Monthly Active % leaderboard is dominated by games: YoVille, Bubble Town, Pokey, Bowling Buddies, Word Challenge, Mob Wars.
• Games also have the lowest MAU/DAU ratio by and large, as you would expect. By contrast, video and friend comparing apps have some of the highest MAU/DAU ratios.
• Despite their huge reach, SuperPoke and Hug Me are amongst the lowest apps by Monthly Active %.
• Much more… If you’re interested in obtaining data on more apps in an Excel spreadsheet, please email mail AT insidefacebook DOT com and introduce yourself. Thanks!