Dave McClure - master of 500 hats - has a great post about how to design and market facebook apps to succeed in building viral growth.
Dave is "110% convinced that consistent & creative app marketing & event notification via the Feed is the key to unlocking the viral power of Facebook...".
Check out the data on our previous and future posts... See which apps are succeeding... Is he right? I think so.
BTW - If you've got an inquiry on a specific app ("hey dide, can you tell me how the app "Beeeeeeeer" has been performing? I'm thinking of launching one in that category called "Miiiiiiiiilk" ;)
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Facebook Top 21 Growing Apps - July 6-11
New data for the 5 day period of July 6th through July 11 in this post - Top 21 Facebook apps ranked by growth rate - including only those which had more than 1,000 users at the end of the period.
Some Highlights:
My Aquarium - from the same Greg Thomson who brought you the original concept with My Garden - had the highest growth rate by far. This cute app grew a whopping 4,852% each day during the period... that's 23,629 users per day on average! And it started the period with only 487 users! (excitement intentional)
Pacman, by thewurld.com, grew an average of 316% per day, ending the period with more than 30,000 users. Old concept, new platform (sounds familiar...).
Love Matcher (Thomas Fletcher) and Fantasy Football (David Fitzgibbon) took the next 2 spots, each growing to the modest but respectable levels of 5,000+ users.
Vampires, by the same trio who brought us the highly productive Zombies app - Blake Commagere, AJ Olson and Rob Gungor) spiked to 240,000+ users to take the 5th spot - growing at 243% per day.
Also worth mentioning...
Bush Countdown Clock, by the Nick O'Neil (who has been blogging about Facebook now very consistently) comes in at #10 with a respectable 108% daily growth.
Some Highlights:
My Aquarium - from the same Greg Thomson who brought you the original concept with My Garden - had the highest growth rate by far. This cute app grew a whopping 4,852% each day during the period... that's 23,629 users per day on average! And it started the period with only 487 users! (excitement intentional)
Pacman, by thewurld.com, grew an average of 316% per day, ending the period with more than 30,000 users. Old concept, new platform (sounds familiar...).
Love Matcher (Thomas Fletcher) and Fantasy Football (David Fitzgibbon) took the next 2 spots, each growing to the modest but respectable levels of 5,000+ users.
Vampires, by the same trio who brought us the highly productive Zombies app - Blake Commagere, AJ Olson and Rob Gungor) spiked to 240,000+ users to take the 5th spot - growing at 243% per day.
Also worth mentioning...
Bush Countdown Clock, by the Nick O'Neil (who has been blogging about Facebook now very consistently) comes in at #10 with a respectable 108% daily growth.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Yes, some apps are losing users on Facebook
This is actually good news... People who try apps are removing them. Out of about 950 apps we've followed for almost a month, approx 7 percent saw their user count go down from June 28 to July 6. Among those, unfortunately, are some that Facebook still shows on their "Recently Popular" list... For example, BunchBall's Games app... Lots of users, but lost 1,234 users during the 8 day period leading up to July 6th. In fact, not to pick on this particular app, besides a small boost of less than 1% in the middle of the period, Games' user count has gone down since June 19th (when we started tracking)... from 280,881 to 280,815... So why are they reported in the top 6% of "Recently Popular" on Facebook? Maybe that's because their raw user count is in the top 40... but still...
On a different note - the US Politics application, by Facebook, has over 250,000 users and doesn't hit the Recently Popular list (at least not in the top 200 (or top 8 pages)... I'll assume that's because it is developed by Facebook. Fair, I guess.
So - who lost their biggest share of users?
- PicksPal Pick'em (-5.35%)
- Dogster's Catster:Cute (-5.58%)
- MOG's My Last Songs Played (-5.70%)
- Zack Coburn's Beach Ball (-6.80%)
- Jonas Lindberg's Babble Babble (-7.40%)
On a different note - the US Politics application, by Facebook, has over 250,000 users and doesn't hit the Recently Popular list (at least not in the top 200 (or top 8 pages)... I'll assume that's because it is developed by Facebook. Fair, I guess.
So - who lost their biggest share of users?
- PicksPal Pick'em (-5.35%)
- Dogster's Catster:Cute (-5.58%)
- MOG's My Last Songs Played (-5.70%)
- Zack Coburn's Beach Ball (-6.80%)
- Jonas Lindberg's Babble Babble (-7.40%)
Monday, July 9, 2007
Facebook Stats: Top 21 Momentum Growth
Let's try something new this week... We came up with a new measure which combines growth rate and number of users... so it tries to punish those huge apps (many many users) which have very slow growth rates and reward those smaller apps which have huge growth rates. For now, here are the top 21 using our new "Momentum" rating...
Facebook Applications - Ranked by "Momentum":
We've highlighted in green those apps which are new within the past 2 weeks... That means we couldn't numerically calculate their growth rate in the prior week period.
Some highlights:
My Garden came out of nowhere to take the top momentum rank - by quite a margin - moving from 4,500 users a week ago to 130,000 last Friday (and 190,000 today!).... and GregT got high billing on Facebook's Recently Popular apps page with his derivative, My Aquarium.
Zombies keep biting... who'd'a'thunk they'd get 1 million users within 2 weeks? Well, BlakeC and friends have Causes too, which is #31 on our momentum list - so they clearly get the Facebook crowd... Which is why they've now introduced Vampires, cause they know a good idea is worth doing twice ;)
Astrolis keeps rolling out derivative astrological apps, many of which pop up on our lists... Chinese Horoscopes has teh #14 spot in momentum, but they also hold spot #29 (Numerology), #32 (Tarot) and #50 (Astrology) !
Top Friends and iLike still have respectable growth rates, enough to keep thin in the top 21.
Scrabble-the-face-book-app (trademark Hasbro, I suspect!) is getting some attention, but I expect that name to either change soon or be bought by Hasbro ;)
So - of course - you might ask:
"How has the growth rates of these apps changed from week to week?" or
"what about the new Apps this week whose growth rate couldn't be calculated?" or
"What about the apps ranked #22 through #101 using this momentum indicator?"... or...
"Which apps added the most users this past week, regardless of their current size?"...
We have all that data... so ASK! We're trying to figure out what's most useful here... so give us some feedback.
Facebook Applications - Ranked by "Momentum":
We've highlighted in green those apps which are new within the past 2 weeks... That means we couldn't numerically calculate their growth rate in the prior week period.
Some highlights:
My Garden came out of nowhere to take the top momentum rank - by quite a margin - moving from 4,500 users a week ago to 130,000 last Friday (and 190,000 today!).... and GregT got high billing on Facebook's Recently Popular apps page with his derivative, My Aquarium.
Zombies keep biting... who'd'a'thunk they'd get 1 million users within 2 weeks? Well, BlakeC and friends have Causes too, which is #31 on our momentum list - so they clearly get the Facebook crowd... Which is why they've now introduced Vampires, cause they know a good idea is worth doing twice ;)
Astrolis keeps rolling out derivative astrological apps, many of which pop up on our lists... Chinese Horoscopes has teh #14 spot in momentum, but they also hold spot #29 (Numerology), #32 (Tarot) and #50 (Astrology) !
Top Friends and iLike still have respectable growth rates, enough to keep thin in the top 21.
Scrabble-the-face-book-app (trademark Hasbro, I suspect!) is getting some attention, but I expect that name to either change soon or be bought by Hasbro ;)
So - of course - you might ask:
"How has the growth rates of these apps changed from week to week?" or
"what about the new Apps this week whose growth rate couldn't be calculated?" or
"What about the apps ranked #22 through #101 using this momentum indicator?"... or...
"Which apps added the most users this past week, regardless of their current size?"...
We have all that data... so ASK! We're trying to figure out what's most useful here... so give us some feedback.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Facebook Stats Commentary: comparing app rankings in small doses
Doing a bit of analysis on the numbers, I noticed some interesting movements…
For the top 101 apps as ranked by pure number of users – comparing 6/25 to 6/28 (that’s 3 days difference):
- 20 apps moved up in rank (Zombies moved from position 72 to 37!)
- 16 apps stayed in their same position
- 57 apps moved down in rank
- 8 apps got pushed off the list (which means 8 new apps showed up)
65% of apps moved down or off the list and only 20% moved up… That’s a pretty clear signal… or is it? Actually, out of the top 101 Apps, only 8 new entrants displaced 8 apps from the prior period - but this might be considered significant, given that this comparison is really just a 3 day difference. I think this motion of the top ranked apps is a combination of 2 factors, both related to the newness of the platform:
First, some applications with the most users still might not deserve to be there (but some do - like iLike), but they are, due only to lack of anything else for Facebook users to look at.
Second, many new apps grow fast, but quickly reach their viral ceiling – being tried and sometimes adopted by the niche audience to which it might directly apply, but then having nowhere else to grow (that’s my definition of the “Viral Ceiling”, being coined here for the very first time as far as I know without searching Google and likely disproving that claim ;).
Now, let’s do the same analysis on Growth Rate Ranking…
For the top 101 apps as ranked by their growth rate – comparing the period of 6/21-6/25 to the period of 6/21-28 (yes – just 3 days added to the periods of comparison):
- 7 apps moved up in rank
- 5 apps stayed in their same position
- 76 apps moved down in rank
- 13 apps got pushed off the list.
89% of applications moved down/off the list and only 7% moved up! The range of Daily Growth Rates shifted up – leaving some pretty healthy growing apps (at say, 7% daily growth!) to fall off the list… The ranges were:
- 7% to 2675% from June 21-25
- 11% to 4955% from June 21-28 (you had to grow 11% per DAY to be top 101!)
With all this apparent downward shifting – do you think the top ranked Applications have suffered? No. On the Growth ranking, 9 out of the top 10 ranked Apps were still in the top 10 this week. On the Most Users ranking, all 10 stayed in the top 10 – with only minor shifts among them.
For now, this looks a bit like early web patterns, where any content was hit hard (sort of)… just throw something fun at this crowd, and they’ll try it. If they like it just a little bit, they’ll pass it on to their friends, passively, just in the act of trying it ("JR just added the Magic 8 Ball Application" - which, by the way, was ranked 94th in growth and then fell off the top 101 growth ranking, but actually moved UP from 29th to 28th in number of users - with 445k as of 6/28!)
For the top 101 apps as ranked by pure number of users – comparing 6/25 to 6/28 (that’s 3 days difference):
- 20 apps moved up in rank (Zombies moved from position 72 to 37!)
- 16 apps stayed in their same position
- 57 apps moved down in rank
- 8 apps got pushed off the list (which means 8 new apps showed up)
65% of apps moved down or off the list and only 20% moved up… That’s a pretty clear signal… or is it? Actually, out of the top 101 Apps, only 8 new entrants displaced 8 apps from the prior period - but this might be considered significant, given that this comparison is really just a 3 day difference. I think this motion of the top ranked apps is a combination of 2 factors, both related to the newness of the platform:
First, some applications with the most users still might not deserve to be there (but some do - like iLike), but they are, due only to lack of anything else for Facebook users to look at.
Second, many new apps grow fast, but quickly reach their viral ceiling – being tried and sometimes adopted by the niche audience to which it might directly apply, but then having nowhere else to grow (that’s my definition of the “Viral Ceiling”, being coined here for the very first time as far as I know without searching Google and likely disproving that claim ;).
Now, let’s do the same analysis on Growth Rate Ranking…
For the top 101 apps as ranked by their growth rate – comparing the period of 6/21-6/25 to the period of 6/21-28 (yes – just 3 days added to the periods of comparison):
- 7 apps moved up in rank
- 5 apps stayed in their same position
- 76 apps moved down in rank
- 13 apps got pushed off the list.
89% of applications moved down/off the list and only 7% moved up! The range of Daily Growth Rates shifted up – leaving some pretty healthy growing apps (at say, 7% daily growth!) to fall off the list… The ranges were:
- 7% to 2675% from June 21-25
- 11% to 4955% from June 21-28 (you had to grow 11% per DAY to be top 101!)
With all this apparent downward shifting – do you think the top ranked Applications have suffered? No. On the Growth ranking, 9 out of the top 10 ranked Apps were still in the top 10 this week. On the Most Users ranking, all 10 stayed in the top 10 – with only minor shifts among them.
For now, this looks a bit like early web patterns, where any content was hit hard (sort of)… just throw something fun at this crowd, and they’ll try it. If they like it just a little bit, they’ll pass it on to their friends, passively, just in the act of trying it ("JR just added the Magic 8 Ball Application" - which, by the way, was ranked 94th in growth and then fell off the top 101 growth ranking, but actually moved UP from 29th to 28th in number of users - with 445k as of 6/28!)
Monday, July 2, 2007
Facebook Stats: Fastest Growing Apps last week
Some updated stats on Facebook Apps - this time with a comparison of where these apps fell on this ranking the last time we did it versus this time... Not a perfectly consistent process yet - as the last time was a shorter period and ended in the middle of last week... while the stats for this week are pretty much a full week (or a bit more... June 21-28). Also notice that most of the top apps according to the Facebook's raw number of total users have dropped off this growth rate ranking just due to the challenge of adding upwards of 50,000 or more users per week to achieve a growth rate at the levels shown in this top 101.
I'm guessing we'll continue to see Sticky Notes grow, as it's one of those standard useful thingy's... and, well, sticky ;)
There's some real consistent growth in a few unique-ish entries, like Zombies, PersonalDNA and Beeeeeeeer... and you'll see some fast growing up-n-comers like Greek Pride and Fried Wheel...
I'm guessing we'll continue to see Sticky Notes grow, as it's one of those standard useful thingy's... and, well, sticky ;)
There's some real consistent growth in a few unique-ish entries, like Zombies, PersonalDNA and Beeeeeeeer... and you'll see some fast growing up-n-comers like Greek Pride and Fried Wheel...
Who won the most Facebook users last week?
This week it seemed only fair to show why some of the top apps, which have several million Facebook users, have what appears to be (in this bizarro-world of Facebook growth) a modest growth rate of "only" 5-10% per week...
We've sorted by the raw number of users added week-to-week... This gives a beter sense of how strong some of the top apps are still growing. In other words, to grow 5% when you've got 1 million users(+50,000 users!) is harder than to grow 5% when you're still in the discovery phase with only, say, 10,000 users (+500 users)...
That said, this view also highlights those Apps which add tremendous numbers of users despite their small size... What is "Zombies" , anyway ?
We've sorted by the raw number of users added week-to-week... This gives a beter sense of how strong some of the top apps are still growing. In other words, to grow 5% when you've got 1 million users(+50,000 users!) is harder than to grow 5% when you're still in the discovery phase with only, say, 10,000 users (+500 users)...
That said, this view also highlights those Apps which add tremendous numbers of users despite their small size... What is "Zombies" , anyway ?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
