Every software developer these days seems to be working on a Facebook app, but relatively few get any traction. Tim O’Reilly reports that of the more than 5,000 Facebook apps available today, only 84 account for nearly 90 percent of all the usage. Of those, only about half boast more than 100,000 active users, and only three have more than one million active users. For instance, Top Friends has 2.8 million active users, FunWall has 1.9 million, and Super Wall has 1.1 million. Then it drops off to 500,000 by the No. 10 app (Likeness), and to 270,000 by the time you get to No. 20 (Scrabulous). Now, some of these apps may have become popular by notification spam or other questionable means, but that’s another story.
Below are the top 20 apps as of October 5, measured by number of active users (For a complete spreadsheet of all top 200 apps that O’Reilly Media prepared for me with all the data, download this file:top_200_2007-10-05.xls):
Facebook Application
1. Top Friends (Slide)
2. FunWall (Slide)
3. Super Wall (RockYou!)
4. SuperPoke! (Slide)
5. Video (Facebook)
6. X Me (RockYou!)
7. iLike
8. Movies
9. Graffiti
10. Likeness (RockYou!)
11. My Questions (Slide)
12. Quizzes
13. Mobile (Facebook)
14. Free Gifts
15. Booze Mail
16. Compare People
17. Honesty Box
18. (fluff)Friends
19. Vampires
20. Scrabulous
As you can see, the most popular apps are dominated by some of the same developers. Nine of the top 20 apps come from three companies (Slide, RockYou!, and Facebook itself). Here’s a graph of the Long Tail distribution (although, technically, it is not) of the most popular Facebook app developers sorted by the total number of active users across all of their apps (the Top 5 are Slide, RockYou!, Facebook, iLike, and Flixster):
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Erick,
Does anyone have a view of how much people are making per user, when they use the three different advertising platforms? Also what is the acquisition history thus far? Other than the Where I’ve Been app, it doesn’t seem like there have been any?
It’s amazing what the definition of an ‘app’ has become.
So the Long Tail strikes again.
That’s no surprise, 90% of the digg posts are written by the same people as well.
Facebooks apps have very little to no monetization value, so being funded by facebook helps if you want to create them. Otherwise you need a lot of free time.
twenty trivial dispensible apps i can definitely live without. not sure how zuck convinced levchin to front his r&d budget, but its working
waiting for the pin of reality to hit this bubble….
> It’s amazing what the definition of an ‘app’ has become.
Yes it’s both amazing and very lame !
this list makes me want to stab myself in the eyeball. aside from the video app, which honestly is a bit lacking, these “apps” are all useless. although i hear scrabulous is fun. i honestly don’t interact with folks that use these apps heavily. it’s a good indicator for low intelligence.
God, I love facebook.
I love the virtual drinks and gifts!!!
Texas Hold Em is the only reason i go to Facebook.com.
Welcome to FLM (Facebook Level Marketing.) I feel for the poor sucker at the end of this pyramid scheme. Kudos to RockYou and Slide for turning “installs” into a commodity.
THERES NO MONEY IN THIS
all these “apps” suck, plain and simple.
THIS IS MALARCHY!!! I WILL HAVE MY TEAM TEAR YOU A NEW ASSHOLE TECHCRUNCH!!!!
Oh i don´t think these apps are very interessting, its more bored lamerstuff
@Fake Mark Zuck - Hey dude… what’s up? Wanna be fb friends?
How does the distribution of facebok apps usage compare to those on different platforms? Like Windows, Symbian, etc. Would it look something similar?
I think people should remember that the FB “environment” is only a few months old and it would be surprising if any of the top apps at this point were anything other than fluffy time wasters.
And yes, they are monetizing by selling eyeballs while they have them. Will these apps still be on top six months from now? I doubt it. The first Java apps were stupid too.
The FB environment presents a compelling new breeding ground for interesting apps because of the huge user base, the API and the built-in connectedness of the crowd.
God, am I the only person who feels these “apps” are horrible…
Don’t even get me started on Digg. One of the most overrated, worthless sites on the net.
This pretty much proves my suspicion. To succeed, you have to be one of the first, you have to aggressively promote, and the idea has to be solid
In about a few more months, FBK will own 100% of the app marketshare that Slide doesn’t have (since Max and Mark are friends). That will make all apps worthless since FBK already makes other things worthless like display advertising and virtual puppy dogs.
Jason,
I agree with you, Digg is hype and ridiculous. Anyways some apps are worth trying.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Slide is constantly copying other apps and use their reach to beat the creators to the punch. At 60% (if I am correct) dominance of FB, you can argue they are a monopoly in the FB environment and should be stopped!
“Fun/Superwall/poke” etc. are little addons to FB’s wall at best - there goes 90% of the traffic - useless duplication of existing FB core functionality.
I am not sure this is specific to Facebook.
Everything is ruled by the few. Similar graphs could be shown for world wealth repartition, successful open source projects ratio, successful startups ratio, and so on. This is what we do best, build things that will be ruled by the few.
It always makes good headlines, though.
so???
Anyway see the pattern here? Just design a myspace feature as an “app” and you’ll be successful.
Whoever makes “Profile Uglinator” or “Friend Collect” will get a ton of users.
@Killer App Designer
Profile Uglinator has already been developed. It’s called Facebook Applications.
There are several concerns I have with this report - you can read them all here:
http://www.centernetworks.com/.....age-report
But suffice it to say, there are easy ways to manipulate those numbers and in fact Mike wrote a lengthy black hat post about 2 mos ago which included the top 3 as the biggest offenders!
Warbook by Freewebs is number 51! We should break into the top 50 soon. We are in the top 10 in terms of percent engagement which is actually a more meaningful measure for social apps.
Hey guys, calm down. It is a good marketing and strategic trick from Mark Zuckenberger. Just think for a moment, if you have a product but all your creative thinking goes down, what will you do?? Make a platform. There are so many people who have many ideas, so after that facebook can very easily compete with them. (Just to mention: Why facebook apps are elsewhere then, the others??? Because people have more trust in facebook and they “instal” those apps without hesitation.) Right now you can see how facebook is starting to compete with famous products. Guess, how will you be able to destroy top friend app??? ( make a differentation in friend.) That’s all and you facebook engineers will know that they are making a good product because it was tested and aproved by users. Good way how to know which product is good and then make it better.
By showing facebook your ideas you maybe earn little money(depends on how much time you spend on learning how to make that app and then making it), but in the long term you will lose your idea. :-)))))) Do you wanna bet about this. 
P.S.: Facebook with it platform don’t losing its identity, developers are losing it. (A friend of mine always talk how good is facebook system, but never ever was able to say even the creator of app on which she spend most of her time.)
I’d to add this to my Facebook Decalog!
http://adscriptum.blogspot.com.....calog.html
JML
Damn, and I’m happy that my app finally hit 1000 users a week ago
Good information, I love Facebook since I’ve met so many interesting people there. By the way: This is a really impressive website-layout. Clean code and accosting Design.
these are like chain letters for the year 2007
What a great idea. Have others write applications for your website, essentially hiring them for free. See which ideas work the best and take them, along with all the credit. So many brains generating new ideas working for free!
As the founder of a FB oriented company that has found a lot of success, let me clarify a couple of myths in this set of comments:
1. If you know what you’re doing, monetization is possible and my company is taking in real revenue and cash flow positive.
2. “facebook” and “facebook apps” are not some bubble — this is how my generation will interact with each other through the Internet
3. There are lots of quality apps out there that are providing real user value and seeing hardcore userbases who love coming back
Just thought this would clear up some of the negative comments in this thread and give the perspective of someone who is highly involved in the space.
All the best,
Boris
Facebook has contacted all the application developers that have applied for a new grant program announced at the TechCrunch40 conference, called the fbFund, and told them they all submissions have been deleted and must be resubmitted.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....resets.php
Oh I’m sure all these wannabes are stoked and still love FB
What a LAME-ass company including the pretenders running it !
The whole Fad-Book thing is sinking just like that graph.
MS cloud-family-share is the future
“2. “facebook” and “facebook apps” are not some bubble — this is how my generation will interact with each other through the Internet”
I’m not sure what generation you are from, but as a young professional in his low-twenties, I have no intention to interact with my peers through your silly apps. I suspect people in similar circumstances may feel the same way.
Honestly, I can see high schoolers using these applications, some college underachievers with too much time on their hands, and generally people of limited intelligence.
Weird. Today I just finished reading “Linked” by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, and it describes this sort of power law phenomenon exactly. It comes up surprisingly often in a lot of things — most apps/viruses/cancers have a few users/carriers/defective proteins, but each user/carrier/protein probably links to one a few great, highly-linked hubs of users/typhoid marys/chemical reactions. Everyone always uses or links to the things that everyone else is using, and problems or growth that reaches a hub can have a stunning ripple effect. Really interesting read.
Thanks, Allen (@29). You raise some good points. I added the link you mention to the post above.
43
http://www.rajuthan.com/
Hey Erick Schonfeld. How come my comments are highlighted by green. My company provides 95% of your writting material and you never considered to give me highlighted commenting abilitites. I will make sure you will be out of the loop from now on.
PS Business 2.0 blows hardcore and so do you.
Love your commander and Chief
Mark. Zuckerberg
**Aren’t highlighted by green.. Your buggy comment submitter sucks.
The thing about the long ail - and great graph to demonstrate btw. even IF I have a small install base - maybe extending from my existing relationships - I can build a powerful facebook application.
In all the excitement of lightning growth and bubble valuations we forget than we can build applications for ourselves, our friends and niches. And isn’t that the point of the mashup and the API?
guys,
I dun understand the apps funda. I mean how do the developers make money by posting their applications on facebook. Is facebook payin ‘em or wot ??
Still got it McClure, still got it.
So when FB launches apps, everyone cheers.
“It’s the greatest web success this year!” Facebook is HAWT.
Now, when the first data is comes in that describing the top “apps”, all the fanboys are…silent? Where has Mr. 500 hats been?
These aren’t apps, they’re MySpace widgets.
And Facebook isn’t a platform–it’s a dating site–just like it always has been.
It’s even a /great/ dating site for college students. But it’s not much more. So unless you aching for the Super Poke, or love kickin it with the fluff friends, you can all get back to work now. And think about developing something new.
LOL! X-ME! BFF! What’s your stripper name? I love Ice Cream! Rock Paper Scissors. Food Fight!
Victory is in our sights: these top apps are changing the world.
Ahhh, whatever. We’ll probably do a FB app too.
We just need a catchy name like HoboWars, Pirates vs. Ninjas or Glitterbox. Fiddlestix! Those are already taken.
Back to the drawing board.