Great blog post over at Futuristic Play which details an exchange between Andrew Chen, the blogger at Futuristic Play, and Ben Rattray of change.org. Actually, it’s more of a posting of an e-mail that Ben Rattray sent to Andrew Chen regarding the future of Facebook apps. It’s a good introduction to the problems faced by would-be Facebook developers. You can summarize the problems as:
- Too many apps for limited attention capacity of Facebook users
- Too many invites from other apps lower adoption rates for all apps (including your own) by Facebook users
- Useful apps have a tougher time getting users than social or “fun” apps
I’m not sure the useful vs. fun distinction makes much sense because it doesn’t really explain Causes. It’s very clear the head start that Causes had has been very difficult to erode. As of 5/7/2008, Causes is down to under seven million installations from a peak of ten million. The question is: Is Causes’ user base eroding because of this useful/fun distinction or is it simply eroding because of where we are in relation to the Giving Season? We can’t really say for sure.
I think change.org is an interesting case of a social network trying to use another social network to get more users. In that sense, I’m not sure if Ben’s experiences over at change.org haven’t colored his commentary regarding Facebook apps. There is certainly a lot of truth in what he says but just to get a second angle on what he was talking about I decided to do some quick look ups at Adonomics just to confirm the problem he stated. If it’s true that useful apps such as nonprofits apps will have a hard time getting viral on Facebook, then we should see mostly flat adoption rates for all nonprofit apps on Facebook. And for the most part, he’s right. change.org, Changing the Present and Razoo seem to have hit their plateaus when it comes to user adoption on Facebook.
However, that’s not the whole story. I decide to check out the Firstgiving app in Adonomics. The Firstgiving app was originally created by the US nonprofit Firstgiving which is a subsidiary of Justgiving in the UK. The app is no longer viewable on Adonomics so I decided to check out the Justgiving app. I guess the UK mothership at Justgiving has decided to rebrand the app as its own. That wasn’t the only surprise…
Lo, and behold, Justgiving has been taking on new users at a pretty nice clip since January:
Last August, I had noticed that the Justgiving app had a large amount of user interaction with the Justgiving app. That continues to this day with four percent of their installed base interacting with the app on any one day. What’s their secret? How did they break this trend? Could it be that the British have done what the Americans couldn’t do and loosen the binds that have held back cause-based apps growth in Facebook? I’ll try to follow up on this issue as it is VERY intriguing to me.
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