So yesterday we launched our first iPhone app from FamilyLink.com. It is called FamCam. It is a very simple app that simply allows you to create family groups from your contacts and then you can send photo to them with just a few clicks. It is simple but very useful. Check it out in the iTunes store under Social Networking apps. We are trying to get as many installs as possible right after launch. So if you have an iPhone please install the app. Here is a screenshot:
So a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the Facebook F8 developers conference. Last week I was gone to boy scout camp and this has been a very busy week. So this is the first chance I have had to blog about it. I feel that the company needs to get something out of sending me to a conference like this so I like to get my thoughts down on my blog (don’t know if anyone actually does, but here it is). I love to live blog at events like this. I can type so much faster than I can write. Sadly the wireless network at the conference was lacking and I could never connect to the internet. Too many connections I think. So I will have to go off my notes.
The conference was great, but there was little news. Also, having a top 20 facebook app (were related on facebook), there were no revelations on new features. So here are some random thoughts on developing social apps on facebook I got from the conference.
1. Research – Understand the audience that will be using the app, understand the possible marketing channels you can make use of in the app, and come up with a formula for success by making them match up. The RockYou guys claim they do this first and if they can not get the audience, channels, and formula nailed they will not build the app.
2. Growth – Good apps are designed to make use of the social graph from the start. You have to have a viral factor or the app is doomed to fail. Once the app is running, tune it for distribution. Top app companies make daily changes to tune their apps to maximize their viral growth factors. This is a case where small things can make large differences. You also need to promote your app in the beginning to “seed” it so you can get the growth you need to start.
3. Engagement/Monetization – now days everything is engagement of the user with your app. How many daily or active visitors you have. Not how many total installs or new installs. Just this week facebook made a change from showing stats of daily visitors to monthly visitors. So they are pushing apps that have the most monthly activity and thus reach the most people. This change propelled our app from the 70s in most popular apps to in the top 20!
I still feel that many of the developers and companies at these events are “gimmick” app developers. Dumb ideas with little long term value just trying to make a quick buck. But there are a few (like us) that have a long term vision of providing real value to users. We will see more and more useful apps as time goes on. I think there is still a vast opportunity in this area for serious app developers of serious apps!
I have been a subscriber to Netflix for sometime now and love the service. All in all I have enjoyed the movies I have received from Netflix and am always amazed at how fast they turn around my movies to be me the next batch. Netflix is also a great resource for how-to videos.
This last weekend I got a couple of very poor movies (both no-name scifi movies). I read the descriptions on netflix and the story sounded interesting so I got them. I did not pay attention to the user ratings of the movies (both where 1.5 out of 5 I found out later) or the user reviews of the movies. That was my mistake. Both films were very amature looking, poor picture and poor sound. And the acting was BAD! I didn’t make it past the 10 minute point in either movie. The moral of the story is I need to read the reviews and pay attention to the user ratings. In this case I think the community knows best. I also wonder how much the user contributed data ads to the user experince on netflix. I think as time goes on this data will become more valuable to them.
Just want to add that I am still greatly disapointed by the selection of “watch live” movies and TV shows they have. Netflix had a several hear head start in this area and are now behind. I think Hulu has a better selection of content than Netflix has in their streaming service. I wish they would just make it so you could watch anything live. I would still pay my monthly subscription.
We are not in a bubble but the social networking space is getting more competitive. Just on a side note I have noticed that many people who had very successful apps in the beginning are no longer building apps and have moved on to doing other things.
There are many ways to monetize an app: cpn, cpc, cpi, incetives, cpa, survey (like peanut labs), and cpe, transactions, gifts and subscriptions. The banner model is broken and does not work. So we need new and innovative ways to monetize the apps.
Videoegg just launched a new product called ad frames. Basically there is a small preview on the page and when the mouse is placed over the ad a larger video frame comes up with the real video ad. Advertisers only pay for actual views of the video. Lookery now has a guarenteed CPM of $1.25 for app developers.
Direct response is driving most of the money on social networks. Branding dollars are starting to come as social networks grow. The big brands don’t have a choice but to pay to get involved. Most large brands need to do many things like sponsoring apps, buying ads and participating in anyway they can. Most brands spend 6x more on TV than on online spending. This will shift to more online spending over the next few years. We are monetizing new kinds of user experiences. It doesnt matter knowing what a user buys if you know who the user actually is. This is what most large companies are having trouble understanding.
How effective is the current monetization methods? Many apps are making money with virtual currency. Ads are not working as well. VideoEgg obviously says that ads that are engaging user better and are making app developers more money.
From an advertiser perspective all the ad companies are very much about branding and selling CPMs and no one is talking about actual trackable performance. The good think about AdWords is that it is based on results and tracking ROI. It is conserning that the ad networks on social networks don’t speak to this. I am sure this means that CPM is the only way to monetize social media. There is still a lot to figure out in this area.
How do you gage application engagement? The facebook numbers are fairly useless and can be misleading. It is a good idea to break and track users into different groups. Like fluff friends does this with creators, sharers, and consumers. Also compare viralness and stickyness. Both need to be tracked. Time spent on site, page views per site, number of monthly visits, number of content items added are some examples of good numbers to track.
What makes an app fizzle out? Is the app dynamic and is there something new each time the user comes to visit. The type of app also matters. Is it something that you only need to do once? The best apps always have more tasks for the user to do.
Packrat is a very engaging app and looks good. Engagement is different for each app. The more the user is involved the more the engagement. Ways to improve engagement include unlock able levels or features and always adding new things. Also user generated content is a great way to bring users back. User forums have also been very engaging for users to create a community around your app. Some apps elect a user to be the moderator of the forum and to filter feedback.
What makes an app viral? Viral marketing is all about your customers selling to other customers. Really it comes down to getting friends to invite friends. Viral marketing is not new, it just happens more easily and much faster. Now viral growth is getting built into APIs and the actual platform. That is what Facebook has done well.
With recent changes to Facebook most app developers are focusing on tuning their apps and optimizing the user interface. Just like content is king on the web, functionality and user experience is king in apps. If you have a great app it will grow. As the platforms change their policies and systems, the good thing is that everyone has to play by the same rules.
Let people know that you have interacted with them. When this happens people will participate more because they know that something happens at the end. Like Scrabulous, you know that you have to take a turn because your partner is waiting for a turn. These useful personal interactions are key to viral growth. Watch your uninstalls because vitality doesn’t do any good if you have a bunch of uninstalls. The average uninstall rate used to be 20% and now it is up to as high as 50%. Redo the user interface and get new graphics to re-engage users and you can also email them and let users know about new features and enhancements.
Games continue to have the largest viral growth and have not been hampered by recent changes by Facebook. The game experience is much different than other web experiences. Games offer an experience that progresses. Things change based on what the user does over time. That has helped them grow viral.
User feedback is vital to viral growth. If you listen to your users you will know what you need to do to improve the user experience. This will help virality. Think how you can reward your users for their actions like leaderboards and scoring.
As I said in a previous post, most experts agree that you need to launch a new app with a very conservative stance on growth. So if facebook allows you to send 5 invites per person per day then only send 3 so you can make sure you can optimize the experience and the messaging. Once you actually start seeing viral growth you get more aggressive and turn up the invites. This way when your app is viral you have the ability to grow your app.
A short session based on an O’Reilly report. Over 600 new apps are still added to the system everyday. App usage has leveled off. And Usage of superwall and funwall are declining. Most categories have a defined app what is the big winner. A few don’t like food and games. The top used apps are games, music, dating, travel and just for fun. Some of the categories with the most opportunity are travel and fashion.
What is a social game and how does it differ from a multi-player game? Bringing people together who know each other or who have shared interests. The psychology of social games will continue to grow. Experiencing the web with your friends is more enjoyable than by yourself. Users are looking for lightweight games that are easy to play and understand. Social games can reach a much broader audience and the social experience is more important than the actual game. People enjoy competing with each other and having a winner and a looser.
How do you monetize games? Many companies see the application as the ad unit. So the game itself is a branded ad. That is what BuddyMedia is doing now with several major brands. It is a good way to get big brands into the social media. BuddyMedia averages a partner deal of $100k to build their app. Sponsorship of games has also been productive. Videoegg ads have also been successful. Some games actually charge the user for upgrades. Like ghost racer allows users to upgrade their car for $20 and they make about $1k per day from upgrades. There are 19 year olds that are making 50k per month on their social games.
Some drawbacks to gaming is that games are hit driven. Meaning that they go viral and take off. Then they level off and die. Continued growth is difficult. People tend to tire easily from playing a game.
A panel from Google. Social objects are anything that promotes a social activity. For example kids bringing home a stuffed animal for the weekend and you do activities with it, take photos and tell the story the next week in school. The question is how do we socialize objects online without having to create yet another social network? There are 18 platforms sighed up for OpenSocial and has access to over 200 million users. OpenSocial is just to the point that it is useful and is live. Most sites are launching with very limited functionality and will continue to add more as time goes on.
OpenSocial is one API and 2 parts.
3 core sets of service. People (who am i and who are my friends), activities (post what is happening), persistence (storing the data on the platform).
Caja – when gadgets go bad. Caja is spanish for box and is meant to put apps in a box so they are controled. Gadgets can be a new way for spam and viruses if we are not careful. That is where caja come into play. It is a javascript sanitizer. It is optional but recommended for opensocial containers. Eventually will be secure enough to run gadgets inline instead of in iframes. That is the end goal of caja. Some platforms will require the use of caja. Users could also get a security warning if caja is not used.
Shindig – Open source project that is the reference implementation of opensocial plus gadgets stack. The goal is to launch a new simple containter in under an hour’s work. Contains a javascript container, gadget server, opensocial container javascript, and the opensocial gateway server. Java and javascript version are running now. PHP gadget server contributed by Ning and was recently rewritten to match java. They are looking for other platforms.
Stop waiting for OpenSocial to settle down. Now is the time to start coding. Everything is ready for production!
Jai Shen from Rock You:
Launch an application with a marketing and validation test. Test the audience, messaging, and channels (different viral channels on each platform). News feed, notifications, email, profile, invites, profile action, non user pages and profile are different channels to think about. Understand your application vertical like channel, content, quiz, games, gifts, and self expression. Messaging is all about the call to actions. Do users like it and does it work. Once you have the app built and messaging working well focus on groath. Viral groath is when one user causes at least one user to install the app. The largest part of app development is tuning. Track everything, Graph it and trend it. Manage your notification and invite allocations and notification spam blocking. Rock you suggests to be consurvative at the beginning until you understand your response. Then get more aggressive when you have confidence in your invites. This will ensure that your app does not get penalized in the beggining while you are building your app. Once you have grown your app focus on user engagement. Saturated social circles and tune for a better user experience. Rock You has apps that have had invites that have gone to every user in facebook. That is saturated!
Virality. grow outside the core group of users. Get users to spread to others. Dont hurt your user experience. Many people forget that a good user experience will be the biggest factor in making an app viral. Non user pages have worked well for rock you to engage users before they install. Many users want to see the app before they install.
OpenSocial has some challenges. The audience is different. It has a huge audience and has a promiscuity factor. Open social has a different user model. Scrapbook is big in Orkut. OpenSocial channels – news feeds (most people on open social are not really using yet), Profile, main page, bulletins, messaging and invites and non user pages. There is still a lot in the air with Open social. From a business perspective, Rock you sees not difference in opensocial as facebook. Focus on apps that are not dependent on viral channels.
Tyler Ballance from Slide. Facebook platform
Before you start understand the platform. What data is available? Understand the audience of the platform. What can the API do? Beebo still has just a subset of the functionality that facebook has to their developers.
Going cross platform. One approach is sharing the exact same code base. This has worked for top friends. Another option is to copy the code and change up the UI. This is what fun wall did. Use consistant branding when you go cross platform. Users start to recognize top development companies and this gets them more trust with the users. Use FBML so that you get the look and feel that matches the site.
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