Facebook Apps: Why they're focused on fun instead of utility

There's recently been some discussion that Facebook apps are silly and pointless, as proven by the categorization of apps on Facebook. The question is, why is this true?

Ben Rattray from Change.org recently sent me a great e-mail, and I asked for his permission to blog the essay. In it, he discusses the structural issues around Facebook apps, and why they encourage apps focused on communication rather than utility.

[UPDATE: Just to be clear, everything underneath the following line is Ben's work - one of my readers wanted me to clarify]

Ben writes:

The reason there are few and little use of utility-based applications is not because users don't want to use them or because app developers don't want to develop them, or even because Facebook doesn't want to encourage them (which they clearly do). It's because the means of distribution inside Facebook are structurally biased against them.

 

As you know, the reason for this is simple math. The only way for a Facebook app to get any sort of distribution is to have a viral coefficient over 1. This is an extremely high barrier for any app in which inviting friends is not an inherent part of using it (or, in your parlance, in which it is not structured for "viral action").

 

Instead, what most utility-based apps rely on for distribution is word of mouth, in which people tell their friends not because there is something built into the app that naturally causes peer-to-peer transmission but simply because it's worth talking about – or, in your parlance "viral branding." And as you've written it is very difficult to achieve a viral coefficient of over 1 through word of mouth. Ironically, this difficulty is compounded inside Facebook because the proliferation of viral action apps inundates users with invitations and makes them less and less likely to accept anything – including invitations to utility-based applications. So the barrier for going viral increases even further. Given current invitation conversation rates of 5% or less (at least what I'm hearing), for an app to go viral, you have to get people to invite an average of at least 20 friends. How many utility based apps can achieve that? How many inspire so much passion that its users tell 20 friends, on average? Few, even if people find the app incredibly useful.

 

(Of course, there are other ways that Facebook apps can be distributed outside of explicit invitations – i.e. the news feed and profile – but these are not nearly as effective as invitations and it's very difficult to go viral on these channels alone. Also, few people want to highlight their "utility" apps on their profile since, by definition, these apps are less about self expression, which is largely the point of the profile.)

 

To see how singularly biased Facebook's distribution structure is against utility-based apps, a comparison with the platform it so often likes to compare itself to, Windows, is instructive. Many Windows applications are incredibly useful, but few of them are viral (those that are, like Word, are only so because the use of it requires that others have it as well, and because they are increasingly useful as more people have it – e.g. they have network effects. But this is rare and they take a long time to gain traction). Instead, the way most Windows-based applications get distribution is through traditional, boring marketing and distribution deals with big-box stores like CompUSA.

 

But it's very hard (and incredibly inefficient) to market apps outside of the walled garden of Facebook. And nobody has the budget for true Windows application-style marketing since there is no clear business model yet inside Facebook to justify this sort of ad-spend.  So the only way apps can get distribution on Facebook is by having a viral coefficient of over 1.

 

(This is also why there is a wide chasm in the installs between apps – either an app is viral and has millions of users or its viral coefficient is less than 1 and has only a few hundred or few thousand users. It's simply mathematically impossible in a closed system for apps that aren't viral to get any traction. And this is not because all apps with a viral coefficient of less than 1 are not found useful by its users – it's because no more than a few people will ever find them.)

 

Theoretically Facebook's "application directory" could serve as the virtual equivalent to CompUSA. But there are so many applications in the directory that it is rendered virtually useless. This is a clear situation where too much choice is paralyzing – e.g. the "paradox of choice." Imagine walking into a CompUSA and having 25,000 choices for different applications. It's just not possible to decide between so many options. And so your natural reaction would be to just to walk away and never come back. And that's how it seems most Facebook users have responded to the application directory – there are very few installs directly from there, and I suspect it's never used much. (And, to the extent that it is used, the largely trivial viral action apps always dominate the front pages.)

 

Anyway, I realize that this is all already stuff you know, but it's remarkable that nobody seems to be writing about it. Instead what we get the glib analysis that all Facebook users want are trivial apps. And while it may be true that "just for fun" and communication apps are the ones users enjoy the most, that is far from the complete story and overlooks much deeper structural impediments to utility. It is also based on the misguided presumption that apps that are installed the most are those that users like the most. Which is simply not the case.

 

As a final note, I'm not sure what you think, but it seems almost certain that Facebook itself didn't realize when they launched the platform that they created a system in which it was nearly impossible to achieve the very thing they claimed to seek – greater utility. They now seem to understand the problem and are trying to take measures to improve the situation, but to do so they're going to have to either tweak things to make it possible for useful (but not inherently viral) applications to have a viral coefficient of over 1 (very difficult, I think), or they're going to have to implement a much improved directory. They could also personalize the directory so that users could see all the applications their friends rated most highly (not just used).

 

Either way, this is a big problem for Facebook, but not the one that most people think. It's not that users or application developers don't want to use or build useful apps. It's that Facebook's current structure is heavily biased against them.

[Ben sent me the following afterwards, as some extended remarks -Andrew]

Extended remarks:

After re-reading what I wrote as well as the comments below, I realized I should have probably also addressed the following two things in my original email:

First, what do I mean by a utility-based app?
Second, should Facebook aim to be a utility? 

To answer the first question: by utility I don't just mean applications that are in the "utility" category of apps on Facebook or any sort of web application that might be considered generally useful. Rather, I mean it in the particular way I take Zuckerberg to mean it: an app that leverages the social graph to create greater social and personal value.

 

Definitions are important here. To illustrate exactly what I do and don't mean, I'll outline what I consider to be the three broad categories of web applications that might be considered to have utility:

 

1. Apps that are inherently social and which let users better coordinate/connect with friends

This first category includes applications that help people coordinate or connect with friends or others in ways that are traditionally difficult but which the social graph makes relatively easy and potentially very powerful.  (These are distinct from "just for fun" games and other playful communications in that they generally help people accomplish something concrete.)  For example, these might be apps that:

 

• Help people organize local sporting event leagues
• Share travel schedules with friends (ala Dopplr)
• Organize carpooling
• Discuss and coordinate events / gatherings with friends (ala Skobee)
• Allow for the creation of affinity groups that require custom features not available in the traditional "groups" feature set (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous groups, as humorously suggested by Max Levchin recently)

Because of the inherently social nature of these potentially useful apps, many of which involve inviting friends, some of them may have the potential to have a viral coefficient of over 1. But they face a big hurdle in sustaining a viral coefficient of over 1 for many successive generations because (1) a large percentage of users get value out of the app without needing to invite further friends, and (2) although there may be a lot of people interested in the app and in inviting all their friends, these enthusiasts are not socially connected tightly enough to allow for the continued transmission of the app across personal networks. For example, someone might create a custom carpooling app and invite a lot of friends who are the type of people who would themselves push it to many other friends they want to carpool with, but because this social group may be socially and geographically isolated from other groups of friends passionate about carpooling, the app's viral coefficient will fall below 1 as it hits a population of people less interested in passing it on and its organic distribution will rapidly exhaust itself before being able to reach other interested populations – at which point few people will ever be exposed to the app again.  And this is despite it being considered a very useful app by many people.

 

2(a).  Apps that aren't inherently social, but which are given enhanced value with the social graph (non-business / work)

 

This second category includes applications that may not be intrinsically social or interpersonal (and therefore may exist independent of a user's social graph), but are those which gain additional value when laid on top of the social graph. This includes apps that allow people to:

 

· Share news (e.g. a personalized Digg)

· Share restaurant / service provider reviews (e.g. a personalized Yelp – so I don't just get undifferentiated restaurant reviews, but only those from people I trust)

· Share bookmarks (e.g. delicious with all my friends)

 

Note that the three examples I've given already have canonical applications outside of Facebook. Despite this, I think that the social graph offered by Facebook has a lot of value to add in that would allow me to receive the recommendations generated by these services through the trusted channels of all my friends.

 

It's also noteworthy that all three companies did launch Facebook apps and that none of them received more than a few thousand installs despite their huge popularity and the extra value offered by Facebook's social graph. This is clear evidence of what I mentioned above about the systematic distribution bias against utility-based apps.

 

2(b). Apps that aren't inherently social, but which are given enhanced value with the social graph (for business or work)

 

A subset of this second category are apps that, while given enhanced value by the social graph, are structured for work and therefore a bit of an odd cultural fit for Facebook even though strictly they could benefit from being inside the platform.  Examples include apps that allow for:

 

• Job seeking / networking
• Collaboration on work / documents

I think it's an outstanding question whether these are appropriate for Facebook, but I'm skeptical they will ever be (just as I'm skeptical Facebook will ever replace Linkedin for business networking). Just because something can fit inside Facebook from a functionality standpoint doesn't mean it will fit the site's culture, and culture on social sites matters.

 

3. Apps that are neither inherently social nor benefit from the social graph (but are still "useful")

This final category are web applications that are useful (like purchasing a plane ticket, managing your finances, etc) but which don't at all benefit from the social graph. It's clear these types of apps don't have any business being inside Facebook.

 

So, in summary, when I say "utility-based apps" I mostly mean apps that fit in categories #1 and category #2a, but not those in #2b or #3.

 

Given this definition, should Facebook strive to be a social utility? Or should it just focus on what it's clearly great at – personal communication and play?

 

To answer this question I'm first inclined to ask the more fundamental question, "do people want Facebook to be a utility?"

 

The problem is that I'm not sure you can give a great answer to this yet, since the biased nature of app distribution on Facebook means that most people aren't being exposed to utility based apps – so we just don't know yet how people would respond if these apps had widespread usage.

 

I think it's possible that Facebook users as a whole just aren't that interested in utility-based apps. But I also think that a strong argument can be made that Facebook could be a compelling utility (as evidenced by some of the examples I gave above), and that the value of it becoming a true social utility is great enough to justify aiming for this. From a business standpoint, if Facebook wants to keep their core audience engaged beyond college, attract an older audience that has never used Facebook, and better monetize both groups, they're going to do more than offer fun ways to communicate with friends.

 

The challenge, of course, is to figure out how they can give themselves a legitimate chance of becoming a social utility with the current app distribution problems I described above. Frankly, I'm not sure whether the Facebook platform is the best way to achieve this, and I personally think they would have been better off focusing on an improved remote login API that allowed users to pull their social graph into third-party sites and then pump personal data back into Facebook ala FriendFeed, and that contrary to all the hype the platform may have been a strategic mistake. But that is another story entirely…

Ben Rattray is Founder and CEO of Change.org and lives in San Francisco

Comments

[Justin Smith]

Very well said Ben. Do you think Facebook will have to sacrifice some of its efforts to become a communication platform in order to provide more 'utility'?

[Adam Loving]

Ben, great post. I think there are two separate ideas here 1: "Facebook is for kids", and 2: "Only viral apps spread". Apps that are useful in a social context (like a friend quiz) can be successful even if they are less viral. "Just for fun" isn't necessarily the opposite of useful.

I do agree it is surprising that there is 10x more writing about the "Facebook is for kids" aspect. I also agree that having a viral coefficient > 1 is the whole game. But I've come to understand "utility" on a social network of personal connections means optimizing what you do with friends.

[YuvalR]

the simple, old MOTED IRC feature can propagate selected apps: friend-biased 'app of the day'.

no reason to trust everything to the users. moderation works for communities, period.

[Chris Yeh]

Good analysis, but I don't think it fully explains the situation. After all, things like Hotmail and LinkedIn are utilities, but seem to have achieved widespread usage regardless.

While you point out that the rise of so many recreational apps has a tendency to crowd out utility apps, it seems like you can get around it by using the email invitation systems of Hotmail and LinkedIn.

It just seems to me that folks are in a recreational mood when they use Facebook. This may change in the future (as our perception of the Internet has changed over time).

[dave mcclure]

(i'm not quite clear on whether the entire post, or just the bold italics was ben... andrew, can you clarify? i was assuming only the bolded part was ben, and the rest was yours... but the comments here seem to think the entire post was his)

i think the only thing that's surprising is that most people don't seem to think all these apps are written for fun as a way to mine/capture social graph data that can be monetized later in different ways. to me that seems incredibly obvious, but maybe i'm wrong.

to summarize:
1) the most viral apps are the ones that are a) social, and b) the most fun -- which means by definition, they're probably not very productivity-focused
2) creating these apps provides the developer(s) with access -- at least temporarily, if not permanently -- to a large amount of profile & connection data
3) once a large body of such data is gathered, it could be used for very "non-fun" productivity and/or transactional apps / features that monetize at a much higher level

in other words, give away the "fun games" to get access to profile & connection data, then use that data to monetize more powerful monetization... like for example, social commerce.

(and why is this so hard to figure out? )

ps - final observation: Facebook could very easily pump up the virality on productivity apps by making it easier for 3rd-party app news items to be discoverable in the Feed. the reasons they have not done this to date seem curious, unless you consider FB may be worried about a few very smart 3rd-parties with dominant position hijacking that behavior to drive massive adoption.

hmmm. curiouser & curiouser said alice...

[Ben Rattray]

Great comments - two quick responses (this is Ben):

Chris - you're entirely right that some utilities can be inherently viral, such as Hotmail and Plaxo. These are great examples of viral action apps because the use of the application inherently involves spreading it to friends. But this type of virality is rare for utilities, and the broader point remains that if they are not structured in this unique way they will never be found in Facebook, regardless of how useful they are. And that high barrier cripples the distribution of most utilities.

Dave - I think your analysis about app developers aiming for widespread distribution to capture data for the purpose of future social commerce apps is great and definitely part of their motivation (at least for Slide and RockYou). But the question is, will having a huge user install base be necessary for making successful utility-based apps since they can't organically grow much on their own? If so, this is a big problem and hugely constrains the number of potential developers for these apps.

Also, I agree that the news feed could be successfully used more aggressively to spread more utility-based apps, and that it is curious that Facebook has not done this. I think part of the reason is that are hamstrung by their need/desire to appear "fair" in their treatment of all app developers, and they can't make an easy, unbiased judgement about which apps are useful and which aren't in an automated fashion. They have taken some steps in this direction by basing the level of access to distribution channels (news feed frequency and number of daily allowable invites to an app) on user engagement with the app, but it's not clear whether the metrics they're using to differentiate "good" apps they want to promote vs. "bad" apps they is sufficiently weighted toward utility. (Assuming this is their aim, it certainly hasn't had the intended effect thus far.)

Of course, there is one more possible option: that Facebook itself doesn't think that its users want utility-based applications and that it's therefore not aggressively pushing them. An interesting possibility...

[Ben Rattray]

Great comments - two quick responses (this is Ben):

Chris - you're entirely right that some utilities can be inherently viral, such as Hotmail and Plaxo. These are great examples of viral action apps because the use of the application inherently involves spreading it to friends. But this type of virality is rare for utilities, and the broader point remains that if they are not structured in this unique way they will never be found in Facebook, regardless of how useful they are. And that high barrier cripples the distribution of most utilities.

Dave - I think your analysis about app developers aiming for widespread distribution to capture data for the purpose of future social commerce apps is great and definitely part of their motivation (at least for Slide and RockYou). But the question is, will having a huge user install base be necessary for making successful utility-based apps since they can't organically grow much on their own? If so, this is a big problem and hugely constrains the number of potential developers for these apps.

Also, I agree that the news feed could be successfully used more aggressively to spread more utility-based apps, and that it is curious that Facebook has not done this. I think part of the reason is that are hamstrung by their need/desire to appear "fair" in their treatment of all app developers, and they can't make an easy, unbiased judgement about which apps are useful and which aren't in an automated fashion. They have taken some steps in this direction by basing the level of access to distribution channels (news feed frequency and number of daily allowable invites to an app) on user engagement with the app, but it's not clear whether the metrics they're using to differentiate "good" apps they want to promote vs. "bad" apps they is sufficiently weighted toward utility. (Assuming this is their aim, it certainly hasn't had the intended effect thus far.)

Of course, there is one more possible option: that Facebook itself doesn't think that its users want utility-based applications and that it's therefore not aggressively pushing them. An interesting possibility...

[Q dub]

I'm very surprised that the leading social networks have yet to be leveraged for discovery (besides iLike, which could still do more). Most of these services (Stumble/Del.icio.us, Yelp, last.fm) would rather build out their own social graphs than piggy-back on Facebook/Myspaces.

Part of me believes that truly useful apps (like those listed before) are confident in their ability to re-create a social graph and therefor, end up sitting largely outside of Facebook with only a "profile gadget" application to market themselves.

[Q dub]

One more thought:

Adoption of utilities is slower because they generally require a bit of learning, or re-tooling one's existing habits.

[Beauty]

I saw within an msn email received "invite your facebook friends to msn". Gee Wow, the reverse was true at the beginning but with msn floating between 4th & 5th positions on Alexa top 10, isn't it prudent for facebook (currently 8th) to change the game? What is new? Give away some of that revenue to the users and watch the #1 slot for 1 year.

[Franchise Whale]

Really enjoyed it, I wanted to click out and
you kept pulling me back in! Many thanks
and keep up the great work!

[Lee]

I'm still fairly new to all this social networking online. It's just become imperative since I own an ecommerce. I actually find MySpace more interesting than Facebook. However, that said - there are others that really make the entry and visit likened to Happy Hour like TeamSugar which is more of a young women's social network and more hip and youthful than iVillage. I think there's still major room for growth in this area overall.

[Adam]

I blogged about this a while back when I saw the decline on the horizon:

http://ignighter.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/its-not-i-have-a-dream-but-its-something/

Andrew and Ben do a great job of showing the mathematics behind the decline though. Great piece guys!