Andrew Laffoon’s Thoughts

Check them all out at: http://graphingsocial.com/videos/.

This is a great resource if you are looking to build a facebook app!

This is my first attempt at LiveBlogging a video of a conference session, so bear with me. This should be fun…

On the panel:

• Blake Commagere - Vampires, Causes
• Jason Beckerman
• Jia Shen - RockYou
• Tim O’Shaughnessy - Mardi Gras and seasonal apps

Justin is giving an overview of the platform. (1:40)

• 366 million apps installed in first 20 weeks (on pace for 1B in year 1)
• Shows incredible viral growth
• Metrics are changing: from total dist. to engagement
• Over 14 MM unique app users in August
• Users came 6-7 times on average, stayed for 5 minutes

History:

• Originally, no rules about invitations. Those who took advantage of that grew REALLY quickly and got acquired.
• Now there are a lot of rules - and a standardized interface that is mandatory.
• Now developers are targeting the invites.
• Invitation Incentives:
  • Blake: points
  • Jason: lotto
• Feeds:
  • very powerful - the main way to spread word about apps
  • How to optimize:
    • Story, Elements, Calls to Action
  • But we still don’t know the algorithm
• Notifications
  • Can send to friends or any app user
  • Can get blocked if too aggressive

Now the discussion is starting…

First question.

Blake:

• Blake was involved in optimizing invites. Ideas: auto-checking a given number of friends, check friends that convert better.
• What he focused on was AB testing - keep comparing and improving. Incentives are key, and AB testing brings great improvement.
• Notifications: never got around notifications. Uses them as a method to re-engage users. Does not help spreading to non-users.

Tim:

• Invite process - they were too late in the game to take advantage of this.
• Invite is the only method that requires active user approval. Many times the easiest decision is to hit skip!

Jia Shen:

• Invites are the only way to grow your app among non-users.
• RockYou’s focus has been two-prong:
  • For invites, make sure the selection process is easy. Incentives are different for different apps. It’s not really “inviting”. In Vampires, it is biting your friends. In Event-planning, it’s invite to an event. Etc.
    • Don’t just call it an invite -what is the incentive? What is the real use case? Get users engaged and wanting to have their friends involved.
    • Tuning can increase conversion by up to 30%
  • Mini-feeds - much more interesting for growing value of the app.
    • Great for putting together really useful info.
    • Same deal for notifications.
    • Changing graphics that correlate has a VERY big effect on clickthrough rate.
• Targeting Strategies:
  • Invite Side - who is likely to accept?
    • People who have declared a relationship (girlfriend, engaged, married, etc)
    • People who have between 3-20 wall posts
    • It just represents people who are core, active users of facebook - they actually use facebook and have real friends on it

Jason:

• Lotto - must send it to 10 friends when you add
• Added “Bonus Ticket” feature - every day you can invite 10 more friends and get a ticket to the weekly lotto
• Mini-feed - jackpot increasing every day

Next Question: Did Facebook’s changes make any major impact? (question not really answered)

• News Feed: Templating is REALLY exciting. Great for aggregating interesting information.
• Call to Actions are key!!! You have to design them to intrigue and engage users.

App Analytics:

• Blake: track application-specific metrics. Trying to measure engagement tactics. “I don’t do as much AB testing as I obviously should.” (bet I’ll hear that again)
• Jason
• Jia: do not over design an analytics system. We run real-time sql - batch it daily. Build a reporting system to view a graph. But raw numbers speak for themselves. The crux is this: make sure you are collecting everything!
• Tim: the raw numbers is the key.
• Blake: don’t overdevelop - Facebook is working on it!

Spam Ratings?

• Formula: # installed/engaged users, # notifications sent out, # marked as spam
• Think carefully about notifications - is it a real user action?
• In Vampires, the number of invitations is limited - helps with spam.
• Jia: RockYou does not use notifications at all. Notifications are just like email - a lot is spam - similar standards apply.
• Lots of tuning to make sure notifications are useful.

Question: If facebook turned on notifying non-users through news feed, how would it change invitation strategy?

• News feed is SO powerful. It is the page you see when you log in. It would totally change the game. (Blake)
• Jia: wouldn’t change much. Engagement drives installs - mini-feed events are designed to build engagement.
• Tim: also not much change. It is another, non-persistent form of invitation. Would need to be able to have two messages for an action - for users inside and out of the app.

Question: How far will the viral methods go to spread an application that is not inherently viral?

• Get your viral coefficient above one, and you take off. For things that are not inherently viral, the coefficient is just not going to get that high.
• The idea doesn’t have to be viral - it just has to provide value. The facebook tools can make value viral.

Question: Do you have insight into the rate of dropoff because of requirements to invite or add the app?

• Jason: no problem, add 7-10k per day, 500 who uninstall.
• Users are becoming much more savvy. Previous: users love to just click next. Now users hate being forced to invite. The invite makes sense, but forcing does not.
• Tim: After June 26, growth rates dropped dramatically - because of user invite cap.

Question: How bad would it be if for every app, Facebook reported the percentage of people who uninstalled it?

• Facebook does report it on the new stat page. (internally)
• Blake: Vampires has the highest uninstall rate among his apps (13%). (actually a good number, says Jia Shen) Not as bad as expected. Is it interesting to users? Most users would not understand it.

And that’s it!