Last week, we Skyped our way to India to speak with Rajat Agarwalla of Scrabulous. Rajat and Jayant have turned their email version of Scrabulous.com into a very engaging, Facebook game, capturing a large fanbase. They’ve spent a great deal of time on building a strong user community and listening to feedback. For more details behind the Scrabulous story, check out our Scrabulous case study.
In our interview, Rajat shared some of his thoughts on analytics pertaining to the Facebook space.
“Well, in the Facebook space, the number of installs isn’t really that meaningful. Instead, we really track app activity, such as return usage. In fact, even metrics measured on a daily basis really aren’t that useful.”
Bingo! The insight we’ve gathered from testing our own analytics suite at dA has showed very cyclical patterns. That’s why at dA, we are working on changing the way we typically “view” Facebook applications.
Even “daily active users” is not meaningful enough. Because of the viral nature of apps, most daily active users could just be “new” users rather than returning. Our direct measurement analytics tool will be focusing on social networking-specific metrics like virality (“k factor” – for each user, the number of new users resulting from that user) and engagement (return usage). Over the next couple of weeks, we will be sharing more details on this so stay tuned!
Sanjana said
Well written article. It will be great if you can publish your articles in SiliconIndia also as I am a member of Siliconindia, I am sure that most of the members will like reading it. http://www.siliconindia.com/register.php?id=T49I1Fh5
Geoff said
“k-factor”
I see you took your conversation with jrubenstein to heart.
Charles said
Well, technically our actual LLC, which was registered a while ago, is officially called “K-Factor Media LLC” and was registered long before we met Jason (also we presented our demo describing K-Factor prior to meeting him). If you’re interested in checking up on that, feel free.
That being said, Jason is a stellar stats guy. We did pick up the “R-Factor” value from him, so that will be an interesting stat to track.
You seem to be quite the troll Mr. Geoff, always on the aggressive, but that’s okay. It’s good for people to be critical of others, and to have a watchful eye.
Charles said
Also, that’s kind of creepy… you were eavesdropping on my conversation with Jason?
Geoff said
Charles,
In an ecosystem as small as the one you’re working in you shouldn’t be surprised if anything you guys say gets around.
I mean, how many “top” Facebook developers are there? Maybe 10 or 20, and they all know each other for the most part.
Geoff said
Also, for the record, I didn’t hear about this from Jason directly. I wasn’t even at GSP. This was all second-or-third-hand information.
Gossip travels lightning fast ’round here.
P.S., congrats on winning AppNite. I’m sure you guys worked hard to win over the crowd.
Charles said
Ah, okay, well that makes more sense. Nevermind, sorry for pinning you on that one. In a game of telephone like that the facts are bound to get mixed up.
Geoff said
No problem. I’m following your blog so closely because I’m rooting for you guys. You seem scrappy.
Can’t wait until your next big feature — I’m sure Adonomics, Sometrics, and whoever else won’t even see it coming.
Charles said
Haha, we are pretty darn scrappy:)