developeranalytics [dA] | blog

At dA, we’ve been working closely and analyzing the rich dataset from the Facebook application economy. In future blog posts, we hope to share some of this information with the larger community as we feel it can help developers and investors, whether it is to make more sense out of all this data or identify potential (or overlooked) opportunities.

Last week, we released our Advanced Stats feature to identify interesting trends (app overlap and app affinity) for a specific application. Now, we’re moving to the category level, looking at patterns between similar “types” of applications — be it dating, games, or movies.

Most Popular Types of Applications on Facebook

There’s a snapshot view of the overall Facebook app economy ranked by most popular “category” (or type of app installed):

Methodology

We grouped the top apps from our Leaderboard into 13 custom categories (the 12 shown above and “Mobile”). We did not use the categories provided straight from Facebook as we know these are provided by the developer and have inherent biases. This is one of the reasons why dA feels strongly for having a third-party provide analytics to social networking applications.

The Big Trends

• Facebook is a “communication platform.” The top 3 app categories are essentially all variations of lightweight messaging. At its a core, a poke, a gift, or a wall post are all direct one-to-one interaction between two people. Also note that these are all extensions of the original features of Facebook. (Related link: “3 ways that social networks are different from other forms of online communication“)
• Facebook is about friends. Friend group apps, such as like Top Friends, Entourage, and Circle of Friends, are inherently viral apps by nature. It’s also something we are all used to (like how instant messenger buddy lists work). It was only later that Facebook introduced the concept of “Friend Lists.”
• Facebook is about having FUN. The majority of users are not joining to be “serious.” Entertainment (music, movies, and games) is their top priority with music (by iLike) and movies (by Flixster) as the two dominating categories. This trend very much echoes the real world as well. It’s interesting that these two categories are pretty much “owned” by only 1 player (as opposed to games with multiple developers). Does this mean there’s no more room for another highly successful movies or music app?
• Dating is becoming the hottest (and crowded) market. It’s not a surprise that a good number of the developers we’ve interviwed had either developed, are developing, or thought about developing a “dating” app at some point. While only 9% of Facebook users have installed 1 dating app, there are already 12 top apps inside this category. This shows that multiple apps can be successful in any given category. However, whether or not this is sustainable over the long-term is a different story.
• Games and “cause” apps are also hot. As noted by Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jeremy Liew, social gaming is quickly becoming a very attractive market on Facebook. These casual gaming apps, ranging from Scrabulous to Texas Holdem Poker, have very high engagement compared to other apps. “Cause” type apps are also very popular, though this category may be overlooked compared to most. Interestingly enough, this was one of the reasons (Lil) Green Patch got started.