The Long Tail of Facebook Applications
Lately, I've been developing a little application using the Facebook Platform (my Easter Egg and Four Secrets, One Lie application) and I started wondering about the statistics surrounding Facebook applications. So, a little WWW::Mechanize application later here's some facts that are true today:
1. There are 1,225 Facebook applications available in the Facebook directory.
2. There are 73,109,074 installed applications in Facebook users' profiles.
3. Hence the average application has about 59700 users.
The problem with the average is that it hides a savage reality of Facebook applications: some have many users, most have almost none. To analyze that I broke the data logarithmically counting the number of applications with greater than 1,000,000, 100,000, 10,000, 1,000, 100, 10 and 0 users.
So, 86% of applications on Facebook have less than 10,000 users, with 62% having less than 1,000 users. The 'big applications' (with over 100,000 users) account for 5% of all the applications, and only 2% make it over 1,000,000 users. So for most people developing a Facebook applications means very, very few users.
Graphing that you get a classic Long Tail picture:
The top 21 applications (over 1,000,000 users are):
Another way to examine the Facebook data is to ask who the most prolific authors are. The top most profilic authors are:
Only Kevin Koder (with 230,164 users spread of 8 applications) is anywhere near being a 'top application' on Facebook. Kevin's top application is Family Guy Quotes.
The top 10 authors by number of users are:
Unsurprisingly Facebook is one of the most popular authors given their advantage of actually owning the site. Ignoring the companies on the list there are a few individuals who've hit the big time on Facebook. Whether that turns in to any money for them is another thing... but Facebook benefits from this Long Tail because the cost to them of the vast underbelly of barely used applications is close to 0: they don't even host those applications, you do.
1. There are 1,225 Facebook applications available in the Facebook directory.
2. There are 73,109,074 installed applications in Facebook users' profiles.
3. Hence the average application has about 59700 users.
The problem with the average is that it hides a savage reality of Facebook applications: some have many users, most have almost none. To analyze that I broke the data logarithmically counting the number of applications with greater than 1,000,000, 100,000, 10,000, 1,000, 100, 10 and 0 users.
| At least X users | Total applications | Percent of total |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 274 | 22% |
| 100 | 492 | 40% |
| 1000 | 290 | 24% |
| 10000 | 110 | 9% |
| 100000 | 38 | 3% |
| 1000000 | 21 | 2% |
So, 86% of applications on Facebook have less than 10,000 users, with 62% having less than 1,000 users. The 'big applications' (with over 100,000 users) account for 5% of all the applications, and only 2% make it over 1,000,000 users. So for most people developing a Facebook applications means very, very few users.
Graphing that you get a classic Long Tail picture:
The top 21 applications (over 1,000,000 users are):
| Application | Total users |
|---|---|
| Top Friends | 7,490,104 |
| iLike | 4,217,171 |
| Fortune Cookie | 4,107,451 |
| Graffiti | 4,085,170 |
| Horoscopes | 3,892,656 |
| X Me | 3,628,523 |
| SuperPoke! | 3,351,597 |
| Free Gifts | 3,106,403 |
| Video | 3,063,761 |
| Movies | 2,775,538 |
| Moods | 2,186,767 |
| Mobile | 1,954,245 |
| Honesty Box | 1,904,742 |
| My Questions | 1,556,722 |
| Favorite Peeps! | 1,459,334 |
| Food Fight! | 1,387,109 |
| Causes | 1,283,009 |
| Quizzes | 1,234,102 |
| Slideshows | 1,216,217 |
| HOT or NOT | 1,138,625 |
| Where I've Been | 1,027,373 |
Another way to examine the Facebook data is to ask who the most prolific authors are. The top most profilic authors are:
| Author | User count | |
|---|---|---|
| Goowy Media | 10 | 6,248 |
| Astrology.com | 9 | 8,459 |
| Sze Tan | 8 | 3,670 |
| Patrick Shyu | 8 | 27,621 |
| Kevin Koder | 8 | 230,164 |
| Pete Crucian | 7 | 503 |
| Lucy Silverman | 7 | 1,180 |
| Sari Williams | 6 | 599 |
| Zach Smith | 6 | 19,397 |
| James Tyler | 6 | 487 |
Only Kevin Koder (with 230,164 users spread of 8 applications) is anywhere near being a 'top application' on Facebook. Kevin's top application is Family Guy Quotes.
The top 10 authors by number of users are:
| Author | Total user |
|---|---|
| Slide | 7490357 |
| RockYou! | 5108967 |
| 5018170 | |
| Jia Shen | 4583310 |
| R. Tyler Ballance | 4556234 |
| iLike | 4217269 |
| Ted Suzman | 4085317 |
| Nikil Gandhy | 3351734 |
| Zachary Allia | 3107219 |
| Flixster | 2775591 |
Unsurprisingly Facebook is one of the most popular authors given their advantage of actually owning the site. Ignoring the companies on the list there are a few individuals who've hit the big time on Facebook. Whether that turns in to any money for them is another thing... but Facebook benefits from this Long Tail because the cost to them of the vast underbelly of barely used applications is close to 0: they don't even host those applications, you do.
Labels: facebook, pseudo-randomness
posted by John Graham-Cumming at 12:04 PM
1 Comments:
New CNET Facebook applications
My Tech
http://mytech.cnet.com
Just some thoughts on Facebook applications and there use in extended the reach for personal services.
This is a great example of how traditional destination sites, which might have grown from the ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses, can now look at the next step. The next step is the resulting of the evolving web’s systems and interfaces.
This is proof that the improved abstraction of information distribution,and the cost reduction of infrastructure technologies can result in the democratization of the web’s information distribution systems.
In conclusion:
My theory is that if one diversifies (Customizable automation), and simplifies (increased granularity and loosely coupling systems) the methods & systems of distributing information you would not only find new dedicated users, but also you will follow/find those who might have left the other traditional single destination web sites.
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