developeranalytics [dA] | blog

We just got back from Google Campfire One, where Googlers presented and demoed the preview release of the awesome Google App Engine (See Techcrunch coverage). Many thanks to our friends who managed to give us invitations to this event!

We keep forgetting to take pictures, but luckily we remembered this time

Here are some pictures (courtesy of Charles’ iPhone):

The Crowd: all wrapped up in blankets because it was *freezing* out

Charles and Jing: happy with our hot cocoa and marshmallows

Richard: priceless expression

Richard and Charles: Smile at the camera guys

Jing: SMILE!

Guido van Rossum: the guy who invented Python ;p

We spoke on the analytics panel at the SocialMedia Business School event last week in SF. It was a smaller, close-knit crowd, but there were some great discussions ranging from analytics to brand advertising. Check out this blog post for a summary of notes.

Just wanted to re-highlight a few key points we touched on in this panel:

• Virality (”k-factor) as the new metric: What is fundamentally different between social networks and the web? It’s the power of the social graph and friend relationships in itself. At dA, we measure the “k-factor” of apps. K-factor is the average number of friends invited by each user who already is an app user. So, a k-factor of 1 means that your app essentially is on a path to double (since each user is inviting on average another user).

• Moving the “Referral” stage forward: How do you maximize virality? By focusing on the referral stage as the primary driver for app growth.



At dA, we like to think about traditional “frameworks” in novel ways. In this case, what if you took the “Referral” stage and moved it forward — even before a user is activated? This is essentially what “forced invite” apps on Facebook do, and it’s why they “work.” By doing this, these apps maximize the number of the friends each user touches. Once this stage is maximized, each proceeding stage (retention, for instance) is maximized as well. The more friends that are referred, the more there are to be engaged.

Of course, forced invite apps are no longer permitted on Facebook. Even still, for the new era of apps, moving referral ahead of retention is still a highly effective technique.

• Importance of seed groups for viral growth: At dA, we are also app developers — purely to better improve our analytics product offerings. Why? We believe it’s critical to understand the pain points of developers as well as understand viral / engaging strategies used by applications in order to produce the best tools for developers to use. One case study we did recently was take two identical applications and seed them from two different user bases. The outcome? 20,000 vs 500 daily active users. Bottom line: your users matter.

It’s been really busy here at dA.

Where We’ve Been

We gave a quick demo of our upcoming analytics suite at the Bay Area Developer Meetup last March 19th hosted at AOL and received great response. Since then, we also had a great time hearing some excellent speakers and panels at Snap Summit 2.0 on March 25th in San Francisco.

Where We’re Headed

Direct measurement analytics tools (in private beta, public beta in upcoming weeks) for developers! We will be releasing our analytics tools on our website in the upcoming weeks, so developers can monitor the health and growth of their apps. And yes, we are developers ourselves, so we keep up with changes to the platforms. If you are around the SF area, we’ll be speaking more on analytics/metrics and best practices at SocialMedia’s Business School this coming Thursday, April 3rd.

New Interview

We interviewed Justin Smith, Product Manager of Watercooler, a while back, so check out the interview for the story on how their TV and sports apps started. Oh, Justin also writes an terrific blog at InsideFacebook.com, so hit that up too