There has been much handwringing about how silly facebook apps are, and how it would be so much better if they were more useful. But Facebook users have voted with their mouse buttons, as the O’Reilly report in May showed:

According to a Medialets survey, it seems that iPhone users have voted in exactly the same way, with almost half iPhone apps being games or entertainment:

Girls (and boys) just want to have fun.

Inside Facebook has an interesting post about Facebook’s evolving approach to platform management. Justin notes that Slide’s Top Friends app has now been suspended for the platform for 5 days, the most serious punishment for any app so far. He notes that while initially Facebook tried to control app developer behavior with rules, it is now singling out ‘bad actors’ for direct punishment, as much to be a symbol to other developers as to punish the infringing app.

Earlier in the year, Facebook responded to abuse by outlawing the tool being abused (for example, in the case of forced invites). This would be akin to outlawing something like assault rifles that almost everyone agrees are harmful to society. However, in more complex cases, outlawing the tool at hand is not necessarily what’s best for the system. For example, removing APIs that access profile data from the Platform altogether because of one application’s privacy concerns would hurt the overall Platform economy significantly: many developers and users would be negatively impacted. This would be somewhat like outlawing kitchen knives because they were once used in a crime. Instead of removing knives from society, the better solution would be to hire a district attorney and set up a court system and bill of rights: news of verdicts and sentences would deter many future cases. Of course, that’s a very expensive proposition, and sufficient accountability must be enforced for stakeholders to have faith in the system.

As he summarizes:

Facebook’s approach to platform governance is becoming decreasingly dependent on algorithms and increasingly based on policy-enforcement.

This is the same approach that Myspace has followed since inception. This change in approach is an important sea change for app developers as it makes direct relationships with Facebook more important than previously. This will likely benefit the larger app developers over the smaller ones so ong as they are acting in a way that Facebook likes.

Hi5 launched its developer platform at the end of March, opening up access to its 80m+ registered users. It is a top 20 traffic site globally, although not as popular in the US.

Unlike other platforms, Hi5 does not publish a ranked application directory, so it has been hard to get real data on how quickly apps have penetrated the user base. Because Hi5 launched with viral channels open, penetration has been as fast as Facebook’s platform launch in the first 45 days, if not faster. Inside Facebook reports on some stats as to just how quick penetration has been - stats I have not seen elsewhere:

Hi5 Platform Totals

* 617 applications
* 1 million total daily installs
* 14 apps have been installed on more than 1 million profiles
* 6.5 million total daily canvas page views
* 9 apps with more than 10 million total canvas page views so far

Amongst Active Users

* 3.7 apps on average
* 52% have at least one app
* Max apps installed by any one user is 23

Hi5’s user base is primarily international, and anecdotal evidence from Facebook developers suggests that international users are more willing to install apps than US users. This may have influenced Hi5’s fast start out of the gate, despite repeated instability in their platform. (Facebook’s platform was equally unstable at launch, and still suffers outages from time to time).

While it may prove to be harder to monetize the Hi5 international user base through advertising in the short term, we may well see alternative monetization models emerge. Note slide 48 in Ben Joffe’s excellent comparison of social network business models between the US and Asia.

Would love to hear any data from readers on how their apps have performed on Hi5.

There are a couple of nice wrap-up articles on the Easter themed special events in MMOGs and Virtual worlds that took place over the weekend.

Massively surveys MMOG events in World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, Final Fantasty XI, Lord of the Rings Online and Second Life, noting:

Seasonal events are often the most popular in-game events in many of today’s MMOs. But each game’s designers have to find a way to slip these real world celebrations into the lore and mechanics of their persistent worlds.

Izzy Neis covers Easter events in kids online worlds, including Club Penguin, Buildabearville, Moshi Monsters and Nicktropolis. She says:

Perhaps I’m just picky, but I honestly think you cannot have a healthy, uber-strong sense of citizenship in your youth-based virtual worlds WITHOUT acknowledging real world excitement. I am consistently impressed by the thriving movement of the community in Club Penguin– they’re very good about giving their users the tools to play, instead of dictating to the users the play. Kids are actually forming their own civilization under the eyes of the moderators & site runners

My friends at Gaia tell me that they see a massive bump in usage during their theme events. As an example, last years invasion of vampires into Gaia on Halloween brought the site down several times during the event.

I think this idea of creating special events around real world events is incredibly powerful. It introduces the shared social context that the players and users of the MMOG/Virtual world which helps shape and condition responses to events. Facebook gifting spikes around the holidays for exactly the same reason; users import conventions and context from the real world.

I’m interested to hear anecdotes and specific data that readers can share about the success of tying in world events to real world events.

Venturebeat reports that some game companies are planning on launching teaser games into Facebook primarily to promote the sale of their “full” games at retail:

Unlike the one-off casual games you’ll generally find on the internet, Gnosis makes theme packages like Candie’s Factory, which is billed as an action / puzzle game. The plan is to split off individual mini-games and place them on Facebook to gain brand recognition for the retail product.

“We’re trying to build up an audience on Facebook where you can develop the brand association, so when you see that same brand at retail, you’re already familiar with it,” says Threewave’s CEO, Dan Irish. “I think for this year, the retail proposition is still the most important.”…

Threewave’s ideas do seem to be in line with Electronic Arts ‘ plans. EA has a stealth division called Blueprint that is reportedly creating “brand extensions” for its games to be distributed on social networks.

This reminds me of the old saying that if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. I am excited about the innovation that is happening in social games where the gameplay occurs within Facebook itself (and other social networks). I think we’ll see far more innovation coming from startups who are focused on these new opportunities than from established game developers who may have trouble with the innovators dilemma in dealing with disruptive technologies, in this case, social games.

The games business has always been hit driven, and the move online hasn’t changed that. World of Warcraft alone commands 62% market share of all MMOGs. In the casual games business, the top 20 games constitute 75% of total industry revenue. As more games have launched onto Facebook, we still see a hit driven business. There is an order of magnitude change in the number of daily actives in just the top 25 games on Facebook:

Game, Daily Actives (’000s)
Scrabulous, 697
Friends for Sale, 672
Texas Holdem Poker, 581
Compare people, 393
Lil Green Patch, 338
Speed Racing, 260
(fluff)Friends, 240
MindJolt, 189
Vampires, 156
PetrolHead, 144
Who Has The Biggest Brain, 135
Scramble, 126
Jetman, 121
My Heroes Ability, 96
Mesmo TV, 93
Have You Ever???, 86
Zombies, 85
Blackjack, 83
WereWolves, 79
Slayers, 77
Parking Wars, 68
Scratch and Win, 67
Fight Club, 64
Hotties For Sale, 59
WarBook, 56

The graph below makes this point even more dramatically, showing a strong power law distribution for the 2190 games on Facebook:

Game 100 has 6,000 daily actives, game 500 has 150 daily actives, game 1000 has 23, game 1500 has 6 and games 2000 and up have no daily actives at all.

In an environment with as long a tail as this, companies need to take a portfolio approach to their games. Zynga has taken the approach to cross promoting their new games on launch, to good effect:

Although Zynga’s games also show a power law distribution as well, all but one of their games has made it to the top 100 in daily actives.

Social Games Network has built its portfolio through a combination of cross promotion and acquisition.

Their power curve is not as pronounced because they have bought some successful games to fill out their portfolio.

The difference between SGN and Zynga is really one hit game, Texas Holdem Poker.

Social games companies that learn how to repeatably create and launch hit games will become very valuable.

Lance Tokuda, CEO of Rockyou (a Lightspeed portfolio company) is interviewed over at paidContent.org about apps on social network platforms. Read the whole thing.

As I read the coverage about the real money trade in MMOs panel at GDC, I was reminded of danah boyd’s thoughts on why MySpace took off and Friendster did not, which notes in part:

Friendster killed off anyone who didn’t conform to their standards, most notably Fakesters and those with more creative non-photorealistic profiles. When MySpace users didn’t conform, they were supported and recognized for their contributions to evolving the system.

A good analogy to both situations is what to do when faced with a nice green lawn on a college campus. Some students will always cut across the grass, leaving worn paths. There are three solutions to this problem:

(i) Erect a fence around the lawn and put up some “keep off the grass” signs. This keeps the grass green and pristine, exactly as the landscape architect imagined it, but forces unhappy students to go the long way around to their classes.

(ii) Do nothing, let students cut across the grass and tramp mud into classrooms.

(iii) Pave the paths. Students take the shortest paths, no mud in classrooms, and the rest of the lawn stays green.

Friendster put up “keep off the grass” signs. Myspace paved the paths.

Now if you ask students as to what should be done about the muddy paths, they’ll probably suggest option number one. But its those same students that created the paths in the first place! It is more important to watch what users do than what they say. Facebook is facing a similar dilemma with its apps right now.

Games companies have the same issue with virtual goods. The abundance of real money trading markets for virtual goods tell us what users want to do (despite their vociferous claims to the contrary). If game developers don’t pave these paths, they risk muddy classrooms or unhappy students.

Michael Parekh points to the Youtube video below and calls it further evidence of Facebook fatigue.

I disagree. I’m not a diehard Facebook fanboy, but I’ve done enough consumer internet product management to know that you can’t ask users what they think, you have to watch what they do.

There is certainly a growing chorus from the digerati about how Facebook apps are for toddlers, and this is echoed in the video embedded above. Interestingly though, Compete’s stats suggest that app usage is holding steady.

The feed, one of Facebook’s core innovations, had similar problems when it first launched. Early on, Facebook users condemned the feed. Today they can’t live without it.

Many of the lightweight Facebook apps live fleeting lives; they grow quickly and fade away just as quickly. That much is true. But their viral growth speaks to them meeting a core need for users of social networks, lightweight communications across increasingly expanded friendship networks:

These lightweight communications are native to social networks. Whether they be exchanging pokes on Facebook or pasting a glittering “thanks for the add” .jpg into a Myspace comment, “content free” communications abound. The meta message is clear though “I’m thinking of you”, and that is often enough of a ping to keep the connection open. Many of the Facebook and Bebo apps fulfill exactly this lightweight communication function, including Hug Me, Zombies and Scrabulous.

The digerati, with their Outlook address books and social network friends lists in the 1000s, bloated by people they met at conferences several years ago, are edge use cases. Their experience is atypical. Normal users of social networks use Facebook apps in the same way that middle America forwards emails to one another. A healthy percentage of the emails that I get from my mother in laws are these forwarded emails (whether remarkable pictures, funny videos, or uplifting stories) and they’ve all been forwarded many times before they get to her. Facebook apps are just another instance of this lightweight communication behavior that we’ve seen online for many years.

More recently we’ve seen more of the app developers turn their attention to increasing engagement and building richer experiences for app users beyond the lightweight communication. But even the lightweight apps are fulfilling a need for users.

Bret Terrill follows up his last post with a breakdown of the demographics of the top three game networks on Facebook:

The Takeaway:

SGN games attract an overwhelmingly male audience. They tend to skew slightly younger as well, with the exception of Pirates which is only ~5% of their total audience. I believe this is due to their content: fighting (Fight Club), medieval strategy (WarBook), and car racing (StreetRace) are all genres that historically have skewed male. Jetman, well…I’ll let someone else figure out Jetman.

Zynga also attracts many more men then women, with the exception of Scramble which is the only game among the top three developers dominated by women(63%). I think Zynga’s male leaning can also be attributed to content, strategy games skew male. However, card games as a category tends to be more gender-balanced, though not necessarily when it comes to gambling type games like Poker and Blackjack. The age of Zynga players is spread more evenly among the three age segments, but with ~50% in the 22-25 age bracket.

Blake Commagere’s Monsters games also have ~50% of their users in the 22-25 age bracket. They also have a fairly even male-female ratio. The outlier being Slayers with an only 23% female audience. I believe Slayers was the last Monsters app to be release with a tagline about slaying those annoying monsters. For the female audience, slaying isn’t as fun as infecting? Somehow I think it comes down to the simple fact that infection is primarily a social activity, but slaying is a perceived as a violent activity. If anyone has thoughts on this please leave them in the comments.