Stephen Abrams pointed to a fascinating post on Facebook Application Trends on No Man's Blog The author, Asi Sharabi, identifies three predominant ways in which people use Facebook applications:
Identity formation: 43% of active app use falls into this category. These apps help users frame themselves for others online, and also assist users in perceiving their own personality. Apps falling into this category include iLike, Movies, personality tests, Magic 8-Ball, My Questions, etc...
Phatic Communication comprises 37% of active app use. These apps establish atmosphere on the Facebook platform and/or help users maintain contact with others. Examples include Free Gifts; Poke (and SuperPoke!); seasonal/holiday apps, and I suppose, my favorite fun app, More Cowbell.
Other - 20%. These include social tools (My Entourage); Communication (FunWall) and Games (Pong, anyone? No? Pirates, perhaps?)
You will notice that other tools, like branded applications (Netflix, Blockbuster, etc..) do not show up in here. Nor, for that matter, do education-oriented apps. Not surprising, but it nicely segments out what a majority of users currently value in a Facebook app. Is that not to say that someday we won't see a broader range of use, when Facebook (or some other social web platform) becomes a more robust entity (and not, as a commenter on this O'Reilly piece said, "just a browser library and some AJAXy web services.")
Sharabi's post also directed me to Adonomics, a site that analyzes Facebook app use. (Who knew?) I tried, and couldn't find the Penn State Libraries Search tool on there, even though we currently have 1290 users. (Adonomics only indexes apps with over 1000 users.) I was able to find listings for the University of Alberta Libraries and Ryerson University.
Here's a graph of the activity for the U of A Libraries app. See that burst in activity at the beginning of school? I wonder how they publicized their app.
Lots to consider. I never cease to be amazed at the wealth of information and analysis out there on Facebook users and usage trends.
You might think that it isn't a very useful app. The data from Alberta suggests that they used it while signing up and never again :(
Maybe, but from that site it seems pretty rare for all but the most profoundly successful applications to top a 5% active user rate. Supposing that the typical library Facebook application has been installed ~1k times, it would be surprising to me if any of them went much over 30 users a day.
That said, even by that metric Alberta still isn't doing very well (That said, even by that metric Alberta still isn't doing very well (
...let's try that again: That said, even by that metric Alberta still isn't doing very well (<1% active). Ryerson has something like a 2.5% active user rate, which could be about par for the course so far.
Anyone have any luck finding Penn State's app on there yet? Or can we see our aggregated rate of use in the general stats developers can access? (ahem, Emily) :)
As of today, here's what ours has:
Users Engaged (24-hour): 9
% of total
12/12 - 12/13= 1%
Total Users: 1,320
Kind of cryptic...it doesn't really explain what the numbers mean.