Inside Facebook

As is typical, Facebook’s latest redesign triggered a torrent of user feedback. This time, Facebook responded quickly by tweaking the home page stream. In response to complaints that too much application content was filling users’ streams, a filter was added that allows users to block either an individual person or an application altogether. This change may slightly limit the stream’s power as a viral channel for applications, but clearly it was a much needed fix that greatly benefits the overall stream experience.

On the whole, the new home page has already proven to be a viral winner for a number of platform applications. The stream provides applications with an unprecedented level of news feed access that many have clamored for, and applications that are taking advantage of the stream through Feed Forms are growing quickly. And not only does the stream deliver prominence for feed stories, but it is perhaps the least regulated distribution channel on the platform today in terms of Platform policies.

Which applications have been early success stories? So far, the answer is clear: quizzes. According to AppData, for the week of March 18 – March 24 13 of the top 20 audience gainers were quiz-based applications. Quiz apps were once immensely popular on the platform, but as rules were added regarding requests, emails, and notifications, this category slowly declined. Thanks to newly compelling feed stories and access to the stream this downward trend has reversed sharply for quiz applications as a whole. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

IQ test – 2,827,492 MAU, +1,459,050 MAU (106.6%) this week

AppData for IQ test

IQ test’s growth has been tremendous, particularly when you consider the application’s 90 day MAU chart shown above.  The application itself is very simple and includes only 7 actual questions. After the user submits answers the publish module is presented, so a high percentage of users are apparently publishing stories to the stream.

Above is the primary feed story the application publishes. Note that the app doesn’t pre-populate any comment text on the user’s behalf, and instead includes text only in the body of the feed.

What is Your Actual Age? – 1,238,525, +722,324 MAU (139.9%) this week

AppData for What is Your Actual Age?

Much like the IQ test app, this application is a very simple implementation that includes a snappy quiz UI with 25 questions.  As shown in the 30 day MAU graph above, the application’s growth has directly correleated with the introduction of the stream.

Shown above is the Feed Form module for the application. While it uses very simple text, the copy is compelling enough to generate the virality needed to grow as such as extraordinary rate.

Movies (by Flixster) – 13,752,039, +1,192,700 MAU (9.5%) this week

AppData for Movies

Movies is a bit of an outlier amongst this group of three apps, insofar as the app has been growing consistently week to week even before the introduction of the stream. Flixster has always been one part movie rating and reviewing community and one part quiz application, with an expansive range of user generated and movie based quizzes. Since the introduction of the stream, Flixster has hooked in the new Feed Forms in a few places throughout their app and so far it seems to be a winning implementation.

As was always the case, a feed story that compels friends to participate in direct response to the feed story’s content are going to perform the best. Choosing the right copy and images are also critical for success in the stream. It’s only been a couple of weeks since the new home page launched – it will be interesting to see how these applications perform with time.

Facebook’s demographics are shifting now that it has grown to over 175 million active users: users of the site are now generally older and more geographically dispersed than ever before. Which applications are helping Facebook engage these older users?

We’re Related, one of the most popular applications on the Facebook Platform, just crossed 14 million monthly active users for the first time. Today, Inside Facebook profiles this Facebook Platform leader that is helping Facebook users connect across generations.

What is We’re Related?

The We’re Related application, developed by FamilyLink.com, is at its core a family tree tool, allowing users to easily find their relatives on Facebook and build out their family trees.

Much like the current Facebook profile design, each user has a profile page featuring a status message, a wall, info, photos, and relatives in lieu of friends. Users can see their relatives’ news on a filterable page that is similar to the Facebook home page. We’re Related is like Facebook’s friend list feature in that users can communicate with and focus on a subset of their Facebook friends, but the application offers a more fully featured and strictly family-focused experience.

In We’re Related, users send app invitations to build up their networks of relatives. In many Facebook applications, the friend picker step seems unnaturally tacked-on, and is often presented before the user has interacted with the actual app. With We’re Related, the process of sending invites (“adding relatives”) makes sense in the context of the application’s overall experience, a fact which likely has a beneficial impact on both acceptance rates and invites sent per user.

App Traffic

AppData for We’re Related

As of February 18th, We’re Related has vaulted into the fourth overall position on the platform application leaderboard, slightly edging out RockYou’s Super Wall. Today, We’re Related sits at roughly 14 million MAU having grown nearly 42% in the past 30 days.

AppData for My Family

In addition to We’re Related, FamilyLink.com also develops My Family, another Facebook application that allows you to add stick figure icons of your family to your profile page. My Family has also shown strong growth from 240k to nearly 400k MAU in the past thirty days.

Of the applications with 10+ million MAU on the platform (there are currently five), We’re Related has shown the strongest growth lately. We will continue to track this high growth period for We’re Related, and it will be interesting to see if the app emerges from this supernormal growth period as one of, if not the largest Facebook app for months to come.

Competitors

In terms of functionality, Family Tree by Familybuilder.com is We’re Related’s closest competitor on the Facebook platform. While quite similar to We’re Related, one significant differentiation is Family Tree’s robust points and virtual goods offering.

AppData for Family Tree

While small relative to We’re Related, Family Tree has over 922k MAU, landing the application within the top 100 apps on the platform. In the past 30 days, Family Tree has grown approximately 42%, keeping pace with We’re Related.

Demographics

developerAnalytics‘ audience profile for We’re Related suggests that We’re Related’s users are predominantly female (61%) and the average user age is 25. For purposes of comparsion, Top Friends’s audience profile shows 58% female and an average age of only 15 years.

Conclusion

As we reported earlier this month, Facebook’s population is diversifying in terms of age and is, quite simply, getting older. For example, the fastest growing demographic group is women over 55. The overall trend of a growing, diversifying population stands to benefit applications like We’re Related and Family Tree that appeal to an older audience.

Just over one year has passed since the launch of the MySpace Developer platform on February 5, 2008. At that time, MySpace opened up the platform for all developers. Now, one year later, what apps are doing well on MySpace?

Here’s the list of the MySpace Platform’s top 25 apps as ranked by total installs:

Clearly, gaming apps dominate the MySpace platform. On Inside Social Games, we closely track the top gaming apps on the platform, most of which appear in the overall top 25 above. The latest numbers as of February 3 show Zynga’s second place Mafia Wars is growing at a rate nearly 3x that of the platform’s top application, Mobsters, in terms of total installs

Of the top 25 applications, 8 are developed by Zynga. Contributing to Zynga’s install strength is their use of promotions on MySpace, including both banners and Sponsored app placement in the MySpace app gallery.

While the comparisons to Facebook are unavoidable, the MySpace platform is a different enviroment altogether. The past year has proven that success on one platform does not neccesarily equate to success on another. That said, these results and a glance at the AppData Facebook Application Leaderboard confirm that thus far games are doing very well across social platforms.

While the very top of the Facebook platform – apps the like of Super Wall and Top Friends – has remained relatively static over the past year, new applications have continued to penetrate the platform’s upper echelon.

One such application is the shared calendar and gifting app SocialCalendar. We’ve compiled a brief overview of the app’s functionality, recent and substantial traffic swings, new focus on virtual goods, and recently launched foray into movies.

Description

The application helps users manage and coordinate social gatherings such as birthdays and holidays. The app’s functionality goes significantly deeper than Facebook’s Events application, as users can easily visualize and document their upcoming events and those of their friends in one, centralized location. Additionally, SocialCalendar takes advantage of the Amazon API, allowing users to create personal wish lists which can be shared with friends and family through the app’s event reminders. See another review on the app here.

App Traffic

In late October, we covered SocialCalendar’s spectacular growth after the profile redesign. As we reported then, the application’s monthly active user count doubled in October “from 2.2 million at the end of September to nearly 3.9 million.” At that time, SocialCalendar CEO Raj Lalwani attributed the growth to the inherently viral nature of the application’s core functionality, and the application’s compelling emails and notifications.

AppData for SocialCalendar

In December, the app’s supernormal growth cooled, and the app settled at roughly 2.2 million MAU by the start of the new year. Raj attributed to that slowdown to three primary factors:

• A significant portion of the reported MAU were new signups during an extremely high growth period. Having accumulated over 8.5 million users, new signups have stabilized now – bringing MAU to current levels.
• The SocialCalendar team’s focus shifted temporarily away from core functionality to monetization, which affected repeat visits by existing users.
• The Holiday period.

Just Launched: Virtual Gifts and Movie Calendars

Now, that work on monetization is beginning to come to fruition. As we reported last week, SocialCalendar recently released a new virtual gift offering that the company expects to be an “important source of revenue” moving forward. In keeping with most other virtual gift offerings, in SocialCalendar’s implementation users earn points by completing different actions or buy points directly which are then be used to purchase a variety of virtual gifts.

What makes SocialCalendar’s functionality unique is that users can also purchase virtual icons with their points. These icons (some 200-300 are now available) can be displayed on users’ calendar for each event or occasion created. Overall, the SocialCalendar team expects “users to buy several thousand virtual gifts and icons per day.”

In addition to the recent push into virtual goods, SocialCalendar today introduced a Movie Calendar, which allows users to see movies opening this week, coming soon, and on the top box office list. Through the Movie Calendar users can add movies to their own SocialCalendars, and can see show times and buy tickets directly. Raj considers this new piece of functionality another step towards filling the team’s vision of a social calendar, which he defines as “a place where users manage their social life and coordinate various social activities with their friends and family.”

Looking Ahead

Since the start of the new year the app’s traffic has begun to stabilize in the 2.0 million MAU range. Today, Raj reports that the app’s daily usage trends seem promising and he expects that the app will continue to recover from the December traffic shifts.

To start 2009, SocialCalendar has launched a new revenue stream with plans for further expansion in virtual goods, boasts a substantial install base, and is showing strengthening DAU numbers. We’ll stay on top of SocialCalendar’s growth and other apps that are experiencing big shifts in traffic in 2009.

Jibjab’s ever popular creation, ElfYourself, is a major digital marketing success story. Building on the campaign’s success last year, this holiday season Jibjab partnered with OfficeMax to promote the ElfYourself experience across the web, including a Facebook app that has recently experienced tremendous growth, according to AppData.

The application is essentially a shell of the external site experience, as the .com is actually the home of the full video creation functionality. The screenshot above is of the app’s canvas page, which includes little more than the image pictured that redirects to the external site. You can also post a link to your customized ElfYourself video on your profile page. Clearly, this “app” was merely a small part of a larger distribution strategy.

AppData for ElfYourself

This small part seems to have paid off. In the past 30 days, the app has grown nearly 3000% and has been shared with nearly 750,000 Facebook users. Given the simplicity and success to date of this application, tapping into the Facebook platform was clearly low-hanging fruit for the already hyper-viral ElfYourself campaign.

Note: OfficeMax contacted us to let us know that the campaign was actually created by them starting in 2006. They partnered with JibJab in 2008 to assist with this year’s edition, including the Facebook app.

Since the initial launch of the Facebook platform, Slide and RockYou! have battled for top developer status. While RockYou! has continued to acquire applications as a means of expansion, Slide has focused on core properties and introduced a new application to the platform in late October.

Using data from our sister site AppData, we’ve compiled traffic data for the top four applications from both companies to get a sense of their overall recent performance.

To learn more, check out the 8 apps below.

Slide’s top four applications:

1. Top Friends -504,596 MAU, down 2.97% in the past 30 days

After a privacy related suspension in late June, Top Friends recovered and today is one of the platform’s largest applications. Slide has since integrated gaming functionality that closely resembles both Friends for Sale and Owned!. In the application, each user’s Top Friends profile is assigned a value and can be purchased and sold.

2. Slide FunSpace +1,970,412 MAU, up 15.07% in the past 30 days

While FunSpace’s traffic has significantly declined from its all-time highs, in the last 30 days the application posted a promising 15.07% gain.

3. SuperPoke! -592,343 MAU, down 11.62% in the past 30 days

4. SuperPoke! Pets (currently at 472,402 MAU)

A more recent addition to the Facebook platform, SuperPoke! Pets is another step forward for Slide into the booming gaming space. In the application, users adopt and raise pets, and use coins (earned through invitation sending) to purchase items for them.

RockYou’s top four applications:

1. Super Wall +195,424 MAU, up 1.06% in the past 30 days

Now the second largest application on the AppData application leader board, Super Wall’s traffic has remained strong since our last report posted in late October.

2. Hug Me +589,804 MAU, up 13.87% in the past 30 days

3. Pieces of Flair +143,995 MAU, up 3.32% in the past 30 days

4. Likeness -1,586,325 MAU, down 32.61% in the past 30 days

Unlike RockYou’s other top apps, both Likeness and Likeness UNRATED have suffered major traffic declines of late.

While Slide and RockYou! develop on a number of open platforms, Facebook is clearly still a major driver for both companies. That being said, it remains to be seen who will be on top on Facebook this time next year – will someone be able to unseat RockYou and Slide?

Basic applications based on “gifting” or “tossing” virtual items, such as food or pillows, were once a staple of the Facebook platform. As Facebook tightened their platform policies, however, a number of once hyper-viral gift apps quickly faded into obscurity. Nevertheless, NoLimit Solutions‘ recent toss-app successes show that this approach can still be effective.

In NoLimit’s Pass a Drink, users can send and receive a variety of virtual drinks, and the app follows the basic toss template that is common across the Facebook platform. Pass A Drink includes a scoring system that is based on both invitations sent and invitations accepted which may be contributing to the app’s success. Notably, the app currently has a daily invite allocation of 24 invites.

For NoLimit, Pass a Drink has thus far been an overwhelming success, as the app has rapidly ascended into the 17th position on the AppData application leader board. In the past 30 days the app has gained over 2 million MAU (up 110%). Building off of their success with Pass a Drink, NoLimit recently pushed out Pass A Gift using the same template. Pass a Gift has already experienced spectacular early growth, and has risen to over 380k MAUs.

Clearly, the Facebook platform still offers unparalleled opportunities for viral growth. Whether or not these applications can continue their run remains to be seen.

As more brands seek to establish a presence within Facebook, a number of social media agencies are helping to bring brands into the fold via the Facebook application platform.

Refresh Partners is one such agency based in downtown Toronto, Ontario. The company was founded in May 2007, and has focused on the opportunities for marketers in the social networking space, particularly on Facebook. We spoke with managing partners Roy Pereira and Colin Smillie to learn more.

Roy and Colin, thanks for your time. Can you give us a little background on Refresh Partners?

Sure – we founded the company in 2007. We both have marketing backgrounds, and we basically came at social networking from a marketer’s point of view.  We started looking at what was happening in Facebook in terms of them opening up with their framework, and we realized that this was going to be huge for marketer’s to gain access to all those millions of users and to really interact with them instead of just posting a simple banner. We originally decided to focus on Facebook, because that seemed to be the number one interactive social network.

At the same time, we started looking at coming up with a Facebook developers garage up in Toronto. There is a lot of interest in Facebook in the area, and we started to see a lot of Facebook developers popping out of the woodwork. We held the the first FaceBookCampToronto in August 2007, and we’ve done four altogether, usually seeing over 400 attendees.

What services do you provide?

We have three core business units. The major one is really application development, or marketing in social networks. We mostly do Facebook apps, but we have done MySpace and we are getting some more interest on the OpenSocial platforms. We work with a marketing agency or just a client that has an idea and we take their concept or we build a concept for them and we make sure that its viral and that it will be successful in the social network, and then we build it. For example, we recently launched the Poll-a-Rizer application for Burger King.

We have one property that we manage called Dogbook, and we also manage other customers’ applications on an on-going basis. For Dogbook, we currently manage both the advertising and the overall strategy for growing the application.

Finally, we offer Refresh Analytics, which is a fully featured analytics tool for application developers. We tie it in to our branded apps, and we’ve found that marketing agencies love that data. We’ve added an API that allows advertising networks to actually plug into our analytics engine and pick up data, and we have one large advertising network that is actually using Refresh Analytics as the gatherer of data for their network. Our current goal is to get as many publishers as possible to use Refresh Analytics in its free state, and we will plan on offering future value add features.

How has the recent Facebook profile redesign affected your business?

With Dogbook we were on a traffic incline prior to the new profile, and obviously that change affected a number of applications and we are starting to recover from that. We saw a straight line decline from Sept. 10 to Sept 13, and these days we’re far below normal traffic lows. We are seeing some uptick, but we haven’t reached the pre-new profile levels yet.

What parts of your business are you the most bullish on?

We are really bullish on the branded apps side. We are expanding our team in both development and sales. Right now branded apps are still very hot, and we expect them to be hot next year as well. We are also very confident on the Refresh Analytics side, especially given the strategy that we have going forward for some of these features that we plan on adding to it. Finally, we’ve been doing work with Facebook Connect as well and we see it is an exciting opportunity to bring apps outside the Facebook box.

Although there has been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks, the long term impacts of the profile redesign on the Facebook platform have certainly yet to be fully felt. Since the redesign fully rolled out a few weeks ago, there has been significant outside scrutiny of the little publicly available evidence that has indicated upticks for some apps (like Causes, which we profiled yesterday), and major traffic drops for others.

Today, we shift our focus to the top 3 apps on the Facebook active user leaderboard as well we three mid-sized applications to get a better cross section of application traffic patterns over the past 30 days.

Super Wall (RockYou!)

While some hypothesized that Facebook’s enhanced Wall and Publisher integration would threaten the major “wall” apps, Super Wall has thus far proven those fears to be unfounded. Over the past month, Super Wall has trended slightly upwards, coming in with roughly 18.5 million monthly active users as of today.

Top Friends (Slide)

Included in the profile redesign was a tweak to the Facebook’s own friends box. The update allowed users to specify which and how many friends’ pictures appeared in their own friends box – functionality that previously only Top Friends provided. Over the past 30 days, Top Friends has trended downwards, falling from 19.5 million monthly actives to roughly 16.8 million monthly actives as of today.

Slide FunSpace (Slide)

Slide, which recently announced distribution partnerships with several media outlets, has for the past month experienced a significant downturn on Slide FunSpace (formerly FunWall), another one of their core properties. The app has fallen from 20.8 million to 15.2 million monthly active users, nearly a 37% decline.

Movies (Flixster)

Flixster’s Movies application is on a sharp upswing, with a jump from 4.86 million to 5.86 million monthly actives. That growth has come mostly during the past 10 days.

Word Twist (Zynga)

Word Twist, a part of the Zynga game network, has remained almost perfectly flat, resting at 650k MAUs.

Dog Book (Refresh Partners)

Finally, Dog Book suffered significant loses, falling from nearly 464k MAUs to 320k MAUs, nearly a one-third drop in traffic.

Conclusion

This handful of apps may not be indicative of the platform at large, but their performances do paint a mixed picture of the ecosystem’s overall health. While it may be appealing to simply state “apps are dead” or “apps are up,” the real story is thus far less definitive. It is clear, however, that the Facebook Platform has changed, and applications need to adapt to the new Facebook dynamics and integration points to continue to grow and prosper.

Today, Facebook named the 25 new recipients of the latest fbFund funding cycle. From a pool of over 600 applicants, fbFund awarded 25 $25,000 no-strings attached grants. Each first round submission was reviewed by an investment commitment comprised of Facebook, Accel Partners, and Founders Fund members.

In the second round, which will run from now until December, users’ voices will be heard. Developer submission videos will be available to the Facebook community and voting will determine the five winners of the additional $225,000 grants.

The top 25 finalists include developers engaged in a variety of verticals, including e-commerce, religion, gaming, education, weddings and events.

The finalists:

• BarTab – “Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.”
• Black Drumm -”Black Drumm develops applications that helps users organize events with friends. Whether it is going to a local concert, or planning a trek on Kilimanjaro, the application seamlessly coordinates offline activities; no more chains of emails to sort through, or spreadsheets to maintain.”
• Bottle Rocket – “Bottle Rocket helps users pick the perfect bottle of wine. Users can compare wines with friends on Facebook or on the Bottle Rocket iPhone application. Bottle Rocket then analyzes the wines users have liked with ratings from their friends to make informed recommendations.”
• Check My Campus – “Check My Campus makes the college search process easier, better and more fun. The application allows current college students to share photos and videos about life on their campuses, giving high schoolers an inside look at what real life is like at these different schools.”
• Daikon – “Daikon enables users to build powerful applications on the Facebook platform without writing a single line of code. Daikon produces applications that focus on increasing the enjoyment and productivity of the Facebook experience.”
• Faithfeed – “FaithFeed is an application where users can share about their journey of faith with friends. Through the application, users can share praises, prayer requests, resolutions and the details of what God is teaching them. Users can also keep each other accountable and support each other throughout the week.”
• Good Call Sports LLC – “Good Call Football is an app developed by Good Call Sports that allows users to predict each offensive play during a televised football game, in real time, and compete nationwide based on the accuracy of their predictions.”
• GroupCard – “GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.”
• HitGrab – “MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.”
• Kontagent – “Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.”
• Koofers – “Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.”
• Newsbrane – “Newsbrane recommends news stories and other online content to users based on their interests. Vote items up and down and Newsbrane learns the stories a user wants to see.”
• Party Buzz – “Party Buzz is your source of information for what’s happening offline amongst your friends. Check out your friend’s events, discuss weekend plans, and find the best parties. Bonus feature: for each event check the median age, guy-to-girl ratio, number of singles, and more!”
• Pongr – “Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores. While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends. Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!”
• ProfessionalProfile – “Professional Profile leverages a user’s existing social connections into a professional network.”
• RealGifts – “RealGifts is a social gifting application that allows users to send their friends real, tangible gifts in the mail, without needing to know their friends’ delivery address.”
• Socialfly – “Be twice the friend in half the time! Socialfly lets users write their own notes about people, set reminders to talk to friends, and plan fun activities together. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone.”
• Teach the People – “Teach the People is an open educational platform. Teachers get the tools to share their expertise, allowing their knowledge to go viral, attract an audience, and be monetized effectively. Students get access to high quality, low cost education in Facebook’s social environment.”
• The Game Creators – “The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-’em-ups to platformers to racing games and more. Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it.”
• TrailBehind – “TrailBehind helps users find great places to hike. Avid hikers can explore maps, plan trips, log their travels, and work together to build better maps of the outdoors.”
• Twenty20 Cricket – “Twenty20 Cricket was created for cricket fanatics around the world to connect and share their passion via an exciting online cricket manager game. Users compete to be the best team by training their players, and then challenging their friends and other team managers!”
• vDream Racing – “vDream would be Henry Ford’s favorite application on Facebook. vDream offers users access to real cars, real parts, real performance specs, and the ability to connect and compete with other car enthusiasts.”
• WedSnap – “WedSnap created Weddingbook, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Weddingbook to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.”
• Wildfire – “Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook’s social features.”

While the above recipients include a number of applications that will be new introductions to the platform, HitGrab’s MouseHunt jumps out as one of the best established applications on the platform that made it through the first stage. The 5 round two winners are set to be announced in December, and it will be interesting to see the level of proven success the winners have on the platform at that point in time.