Stanford Class’ Facebook Application Crosses 1 Million Installs

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1. Ted Dziuba
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:33 pm

   Just curious, how are any of these useful to anybody?

2. Omer Zach
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

   Typo: In the second sentence, you wrote “produced” instead of “produce”.

3. David W.
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:46 pm

   It’s nice to know that the FB community is still into these trivial applications. The apps are really cluttering up some profiles. The multiple walls are getting pretty irritating. Is anybody going to come up anything useful besides me? Most of these apps are going to die and if I could block all these invites to apps, I would.

4. Techbanyan
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

   I concur with the person above me. How exactly is it useful. It seems like the faster they go notch the counts, the faster they are going to fall. But perhaps by then it would be the time to move off.

   KissMe sounds like it would do good ..hell who wouldnt like to kiss or be kissed but its too kiddish to go on for long until the next best thing comes out.

   Regards
   http://www.techbanyan.com

5. David W.
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:48 pm

   I’m so glad MySpace isn’t cluttered with this stuff yet, but now that OpenSocial has opened the floodgates. I am afraid. Because there’s already insane comment spamming on MySpace.

6. Open Source Education
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

   A class like this should be held through distance learning. A huge market of programmers & entrepreneurs are cut out. Anybody outside of Stanford or for that matter Silicon Valley has to learn this on their own.

   Here’s your chance (Tim) O’Reilly.

7. David Mackey
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

   blahh, blahh, blahh. I hate Facebook apps.

8. Slappenstance
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

   The facebook platform is turning out to be largely useless. Viral and useless. Anything useful gets buried.

9. magnusdopus
   

   November 19th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

   Geez, looking forward to when Techcrunch reports on the next Facebook innovation - smileys anyone?

10. magnusdopus
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    Gotta love it when the Stanford intellectual elite are devoted to producing such monumental drivel.

11. Doron Vermaat
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    yesterday i removed over 250 invites for several applications. it drives me nuts. the way most aps are generating users (including the two mentioned in this post) is close to spamming.

12. www.CARversation.com
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    holy smokes batman.

13. Techbanyan
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

    TechCrunch Comments looks like a fertile ground for spamming. Do they even check it! I hope they do

    What the hell…
    [deleted]

14. YoungVC
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

    We are going to look back in 12-18 months (or less) and ridicule how stupid we all were for giving a crap about all these useless, inane FB apps. It is truly terrifying to see how much press all this is getting. This post basically illustrates how useless apps are turning FB into MySpace, which everyone loves to mock.

    Bottom line: high schoolers and college kids are going to migrate somewhere else once they realize their parents and parents’ friends can see what they’re up to on FB.

15. Dan Ackerman Greenberg
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    Yeah, our students are KICKING ASS!

    Dan
    Lead TA
    http://www.dan.ag

16. Dan Ackerman Greenberg
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    And to all of you griping about inane apps on FB, you’re just jealous.

17. tim
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    we interviewed a couple dozen teens lately about their myspace/fb usage - one of the major complaints about FB was about ‘all these annoying apps’.
    So while users migrated from ms->fb they are now migrating back to ms.

18. uberinvestor.com
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    I wonder how they are really commercializing them. I prefer a group over an App, similar to the one I have created for my site http://www.uberinvestor.com on Facebook
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5956823430

    Everyone is welcome to join.

19. The Hater
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    @15: You’re serious? Really?

    “Let us help design your viral strategy.”

    Listen, kid, we all admire your enthusiasm and clearly since you’re going to the poor man’s CMU you’ve got some brains about you but let me offer some free advice - practice your trade in a platform/discipline agnostic fashion. You don’t want to be 25 and looking back on all the mistakes that you made.

20. Allison
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:24 pm

    I wonder if the spammers are reading this article and coming up with new and novel ideas to use FB to spam us all into oblivion with similar “apps.”

21. Fred
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    @18: I do believe Stanford cs outranks CMU. That said, I don’t think the folks in this class are the ones pounding out the high power research.

22. Joachim De Lombaert
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    Actually, Send HOTNESS achieved 1 million installs about two hours after KissMe did.

23. Bill Templeton
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

    Five years from now, we will look back on this Facebook app bubble and say, “what the hell were we thinking?”

24. David Begdorf
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 9:57 pm

    @1,3&4

    As a producer of several “so-called” useful apps, I’d like to congratulate these kids for their success. Although its nice that we adults (I use the word loosely) can leverage facebook to extend the reach of our grown-up utilities and applications… that’s not what the spirit of facebook is about.

    There’s a reason American Idol gets the viewers it does and it has nothing to do with its utility or functionality. If you spent 20 minutes in the media room at a college library (and I have) you’ll gain a real appreciation for how college students spend their time goofing off on facebook. So, lets give some credit to a group of college kids who managed to entertain 2 million + of their peers and connect with them in a way that few people ever will.

    Cool?

25. Dan Ackerman Greenberg
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    David - I think you’ve got the key. It’s really about entertainment and lightweight social connectivity. And as our students’ successes have shown, if you can provide FB users with a new way to flirt, they’ll use it. KissMe, Send Hotness, Hugs, Share the Love, the list goes on…

    No one is claiming that our students’ apps are breakthroughs in online web apps - but there is no denying that they’ve cracked the secret viral code of Facebook and with luck, these lessons will apply across any social network.

    Dan

26. Rod
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

    @YoungVC

    You seriously do not get it. These apps are the beginning of a marketing bonanza that will make Google look small.

    The apps let marketers gather demographic information on users. For example, age, gender and location. That information can then be reused to deliver better targeting when Facebook users do other things, such a search or read news.

    No longer will advertisers be showing ring tone ads to 40 year old men or showing viagra ads to 20 year old women. That alone is going to radically alter click through rates.

27. KissThis
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:04 pm

    I can’t believe I’m commenting on what is ostensibly a college “group project”. Sorry, but putting a pedigreed flag on an accredited college adventure does not convert it into industry news (PR fodder, YES… but not news).

28. Jason Moy
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:18 pm

    Dan Ackerman Greenberg, please explain how this is even remotely noteworthy?

    The innovation value of KissMe is exactly zero:

    - Anyone who has coded a FB app can tell you that KissMe is absolutely trivial to implement.

    - From a product perspective, KissMe is no different from a Poke.

29. Open Source Education
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

    @ Jason Moy

    Last time I checked the valuation of a FB app is approximately $1.30/user.

    That’s noteworthy my friend!

30. EH
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

    How many of those 1,000,000 installs were from people who wanted to see what an FB app with 100,000 installs looks like?

31. David Begdorf
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

    @Jason Moy (28)

    What was the difference between friendster and myspace?

    Using your methodology the innovative value of myspace should approximate 0 as well.

    However, the platform took off because it found a way to connect with users. Looking at facebook applications one can see that certain ones “take off” and others do not. Kiss me and Hotness certainly fall into the former catagory. For whatever reason they’ve been installed by millions of users while other similar applications have not.

    From a product perspective a lot of things look, smell and sound the same. However, these kids have found a way to make their’s the apps that have been installed. Not having used these apps I can’t tell you if it was packaging, marketing or just dumb luck. However, the emergence of two such highly popular apps from the same class make me keen to rule out the latter.

    I’m not arguing for the salience or importance of facebook apps. I simply want to commend students on a job well done — assuming the goal was to produce highly successful facebook apps.

    Finally, I can guarantee you that if you got one of these students in a room they’d surprise you by their understanding of viral networking and the social graph.

32. Garth
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    Kiss Me, Zombies vs. Vampires, Vampires vs. Pirates, Mardi Gras Beads… these are the apps that are poising the Facebook environment and giving all apps a bad name. I’m sure the Facebook people are aware of this, and want to kill these things, but they can’t. These apps are like heroin: very popular, and spread quickly, but they don’t do anybody any good.

    (My app is actually useful. It organizes your books. Try it out: http://ubc.facebook.com/apps/a.....2397701323)

33. Charles
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Last I checked, the hundreds of thousands of stuffed animals sold every month haven’t been very “useful” to anybody.

    Sometimes things don’t have to be “useful.” Sometimes “fun” is good enough.

    There are several multi-billion dollar industries out there based on making “fun” (yet useless) things to do. Don’t ignore them.

34. Stephen Levinson
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    Hmm… is it me or are these things as useless as a wooden nail?

35. Jono
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

    -_-”
    Transcript from the KissMe team:
    Person 1: “Wow I have an idea, lets invite people to use our application, but instead of calling it an invite, lets call it a Kiss”
    Person 2: Ok, I am feeling ya…what does the application let them do when they have invited friends?
    Person 1: Nothing, the whole idea is to invite people to use it, but it does not actually do anything, the coolness is in the invite
    Person 2: OMG you are a genius! High Distinction here we come”

    As per the existing comments, this is just retarded and I fail to see how such applications can be so popular…

36. Rajeev
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 11:36 pm

    Internet has provided a cheap way of marketing digital content globally. If used properly can create fortunes, but some CEO’s feel that technology has no ROI.

    http://tekno-world.blogspot.com

37. Timothy Moenk
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

    These numbers aren’t remarkable at all! It’s all about point of entry, and university students typically have between 250-500 connections on Facebook. Also given the ubiquity of Facebook in University, and the fact that these apps are built within the community, and you have a soup for this level of adoption.

    Professionally created Facebook apps aren’t necessarily nested within such a well connected market of potential users from the get go.

    It’s all about social network real estate! Location location location! Not just where, but who/where?

38. nick of cebu
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 12:04 am

    I agree with #10 [magnusdopus]. Asinine stuff, like the rest of Facebook.

39. Ben M
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Not only are the apps useless, this shouldn’t even be a university course. Teach the kids to think and they can read the FB API docs for themselves.

40. Rick
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 1:33 am

    it’s funny to read most of the comments above.

    1) these stanford students are not stupid..they are targeting basic needs in human behavior. Your social patterns might differ from 99% of the current facebook population, but that’s not a fault of the application.
    2) these apps are turning from virality mode to engagement mode as you post.. a strategy that most of you seem not to understand.
    3) 10% - 30% users are already returning to these apps on a daily basis.
    4) these top apps are already generating these kids enough income that are allowing them to invest more time and resources in scientific and non-profit causes supported by social platforms.. something you are not aware of.
    5) if some of you claim to be rocket scientists then WTF would you be reading this post anyway?

41. Toby
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 1:49 am

    This is incredibly valuable and high quality work - exactly what you would expect from one of America’s finest educational institutions. We should all be proud!

    If only all american schools could work to such high standards and ideals.

    Keep up the good work!

    (Yes, I am joking. I obviously just lost a hell of a lot of respect for Stanford.)

42. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 4:07 am

    It’s good to know that having killed the arts of conversation and photography, F******* now has KissMe and Send Hotness to kill love and desire respectively as well.

43. Mark
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 5:07 am

    According to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....ity_people Stanford alumni include 18 astronauts, countless winners of Nobel prizes, Turing awards and the inventors of TCP/IP, Google and AltaVista. They’ve truly reached the pinnacle of academic excellence now they’re teaching students how to build Facebook apps.

44. Arkadaş bul
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    The facebook platform is turning out to be largely useless. Viral and useless. Anything useful gets buried.

45. Noah Weiss
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    As a member of the Stanford class, I find this post and the discussion about the merit of these apps really interesting. I think the key takeaway is that the developers of KissMe and Send Hotness accomplished exactly what they set out to do–build an app whose sole purpose was to get as many users to install it as fast as possible. Given the time frame in which these apps have built their user bases, there is no argument that both developer teams hit a home run given their goals.

    For those who complain about the avalanche of apps that are merely wrappers for the invite friends functionality–I consider myself part of this camp–the real person to direct this criticism to is facebook. The platform makes these type of apps not just possible, but incredibly easy. And developers have seen how successful this genre can be (the jury is still out as to why people would install 20 different versions of “poke”). So from a responding to enviroment perspective, it is no surprise that the vast majority of popular apps have followed this approach.

    My team wanted to build something more substantial and focus on deep and continuous engagement. We adopted the classic board game Guess Who? and turned it social by creating boards with the faces of mutual friends when one person challenges another to a game (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5225434263). We’ve had the app released for two weeks, and despite some major server problems, we’re only 100 users away from 1,000 daily active users (25% active user %). This is not bad, but it is far from the astounding growth of KissMe and Send Hotness.

    What we care more about are metrics like:
    - The average visitor goes to 7.6 pages. Nearly 7% of visitors go to 20+ pages–that is a veritable marathon for a web application.
    - The average visitor spends over 6.5 minutes on the app.
    - Perhaps most important, over 60% of our users have used the app more than 10 times.

    I am thoroughly impressed with how many users KissMe and Send Hotness have acquired. At the same time, I am happy with the engagement metrics, despite relatively modest user numbers, our own app has garnered. Two different goals, two seemingly successful outcomes.

46. AnonTroll
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 8:57 am

    Facebook is the playground for useless and trivial apps. But then who would have thought that Twitter can be so popular, another time wasting site that appeals primarily to self-absorbed under 30s crowd.

47. dave mcclure
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    (reposting this — my earlier comment last night still awaiting moderation due to links i guess)

    to be accurate, i co-teach the class with Professor BJ Fogg, who runs the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, along with lots of help from Yee Lee (ex-Slide) & Jia Shen (RockYou), as well as our TAs (Dan Ackerman, Rob Fan, & Greg Schwartz). also the students number about 75-80 across 25 teams, and have built ~30 apps to date (the list of most of our Stanford student apps are here).

    @ all the naysayers on this post: you’re entitled to your opinions on the merits of the class and/or the apps, but i challenge you to find another class where students can learn & apply their knowledge to generate such astonishing & measurable results in such a short time period.

    while the goals of the class were not exclusively distribution-focused, it’s been impressive to see not 1 but 2 student teams create apps that in barely a month have registered 1M+ installs and 100K+ daily users. while the apps may indeed be straightforward & lighthearted, we’ve been amazed at the ability of our students to learn & implement viral methods on the Facebook Platform so successfully. and beyond the 2 apps noted, another 10 apps have registered 10K+ installs and 1K+ daily users — still quite respectable for student projects.

    whether or not these apps are “useful” or simply entertaining i feel is missing the point — our goals for the class were to learn about building apps on Facebook, to understand recent viral techniques for customer acquisition on socially-aware application platforms, and to learn how to apply metrics & analytics in product design & product marketing. based solely on those objectives, we’re pretty happy with the results.

    note: in addition to app objectives that were distribution-oriented, we also have a second set of objectives around apps that are user-engagement focused. we’re working on these apps now, and hope to have a few of them finished by the end of the year.

    for more info on the class, please visit the class website at:
    http://captology.stanford.edu/facebook/

    - dave mcclure
    class co-instructor

48. Anand C
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    I think the naysayers have it right when they claim these apps are useless. MySpace = “message spam” while Facebook = “app/widget spam”. Most of what we see on Facebook is garbage, but lets not forgot that the platform hasn’t really been around long enough to pass judgment.

    That being said, it is obvious the purpose of this class was to understand Facebook as a community. I’m sure these students have a great understanding of viral patterns on Facebook, retention rates, etc.

    Over time we will see clever apps that can gain users at astonishing rates with little to no formal marketing.

49. I don't need an ipodom
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 10:19 am

    Apps in progress at Stanford FB Class: EatMe, PinchMe, KickMe, SuckMe, FxxkMe…I can guarantee all of them will pass 1 million-install mark in one week.

50. Riz
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    I think most of the apps on facebook are not very useful. There are few notable exceptions. I stumbled onto these recently

    One is on self expression and opinions
    Check it out “if you get time” http://apps.facebook.com/ithinkapp
    You can post opinions, what you feel etc and people can then agree/disagree on them.
    You can start a opinion like Techcrunch Post quality has gone down.. AGREE|DISAGREE. and see what happens when people around the world start voting on it. The discussions are also very interesting…

    There are some others like Travelpod-challenge which lets you play an atlas game… a good stress buster i must say…

51. Kevin Old
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    I just think it’s great that students are building things that get such attention. Corporations are trying to cash in big on Facebook apps. I’ve never understood the hype with FB apps, but maybe seeing how the massive installs of these FB apps haven’t resulted in a dime will help solidify to corporate america that there’s no money in FB apps.

52. AnonTroll
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 10:55 am

    I will be the first to admit, I am over 30 *gasp* and yes there is a generation gap between those over 30 and those under 30. I guess the term for the under 30 is “Millennials”.

    Excerpt from 60 minutes on Millennials
    Stand back all bosses! A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from giving orders, to your starched white shirt and tie. They are called, among other things, “millennials.” There are about 80 million of them, born between 1980 and 1995, and they’re rapidly taking over from the baby boomers who are now pushing 60.

    They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief you can, take your job and shove it.

    ———-
    God forbid, work ethic in this country (USA) has gone down the toilet. This pretty much sets the stage for hungry countries like China, India, Russia, etc to overtake US as the world leaders, it’s happening already.

53. AnonTroll
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 11:10 am

    Oops, forgot to mention the purpose of my post on millennials. My point is that while I think that most of Facebook apps are useless, millennials may well disagree with me.

54. Brett Wayn
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    Trying to see the woods from the trees here.

    Social networks, in the form of Facebook and others in recent years, are new media forms. Online community has been around as long as the Well and Compuserve and the early BBSs (longer if you go back to what was happening between scientists on ARPAnet), but multimedia GUI/publishing, ease-of-use and ubiquitous fast connectivity provided a transformation and fuelled explosive growth.

    Alongside such growth comes economic potential, so there’s bound to be a lot of experimentation and much roadkill - that’s the history of all media. Seems like the Stanford class is stepping right into the melee. For those who damn these applications as a waste of time, I guess you never watched network television or read a tabloid newspaper or a trashy magazine - because God forbid anyone should waste any time and have fun. “All media attention must be worthy!” Please ….

    There have been many media empires built on trash. Some of those businesses remained steadfastly trashy, others used their cashflows to produce much higher-brow product and mix it up. I find the techie intellectual snobbery here is naive and misses the bigger picture. I believe Facebook apps are analogous to programming on other media - creative endeavours built on a platform which are designed to capture attention in the hope of being able to monetize it. A handful will become economically successful, maybe one or two will change the world for the better and win some awards, cementing their place in popular culture. Most will fail and be consigned to oblivion.

    I too delete most app invites because I find them tedious, but dare not judge others who are innovating in a new space and the audiences who are experimenting along with them. No harm done bar a few lines of code I suppose, unless we want to start an argument about the carbon footprint of Facebook apps …

55. kissMyHotness
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    @52: not sure what you’re talking about. With 1mm users and ads from cubics and social media these guys are surely making $2-4,000 per week. I’ve never heard of a class before that ends up paying for your tuition.

56. copycat apps
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    @dan AG, Dave McClure, and everyone:

    what people fail to realize in congratulating these apps is that they’re merely copycat apps of already successful applications.

    send hotness basically stole their idea from hotness.
    http://apps.facebook.com/thehotness/

    “Think your friends are hot? Let them know by adding them to your Hot Friends list! Get friends to add you to boost your own Hotness level.”

    whereas send hotness is:
    “Spread the love - tell your friends you think they’re hot! They’ll probably do the same back to you. Start sending HOTNESS now, and see where you rank among your hottest friends!”

    apparently, one of the developers who made send hotness also made “a second graffiti” application. figures.

    i can’t wait for the user-engagement apps. i like where noah is going with his guess who application, and i only wish high-use apps get rewarded as much if not more than spam apps.

57. techyob
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    Looks like this class mastered the art of the sneeze.

    In all markets capturing distribution channel is key. Engagement can come later, but first you need to be occupying the shelf space.

    For those who cant get access to this excellent course, for only $24.95 you can buy “The Idea Virus” by Seth Godin.

58. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog
    

    November 21st, 2007 at 3:01 am

    @45

    Haha, Guess Who on Facebook is actually a great idea.

    “Is your person a wanker?”

    “Yes.”

    “Wait, that means everyone on my board stays up. Erm… is your person a trendwhore?”

    And so on until the world’s merciful end.

59. JeffL
    

    November 21st, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    As a student in this class, I can add some additional insight on value here. While some apps (as mentioned above) have been successful, many have not notwithstanding the fact that the unsuccessful one’s have been remarkably similar.

    We, as a collective, have learned about what works and what doesn’t work, at a level of granularity beyond what you’ll find in book.

    “EatMe, PinchMe, KickMe” - obviously a joke, but I can comment intelligently on why these sorts of apps would fail on Facebook. It boils down to marketing and demographics - also understanding your consumer. Are the huge apps trivial? Maybe, but any person who understands the ingredient necessary to cross the 1M user threshold on FB has valuable knowledge in other contexts.

    If crossing 400K ACTIVE users were that easy, send hotness would not be the 17th ranked app (with that metric) today.

    http://adonomics.com/leaderboa.....p;filter=0

60. Limewire Music Downloads
    

    November 27th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    Yhanks you0d0d01

61. http://musicdownloadsmp3.tripod.com/music_downloads.html
    

    December 10th, 2007 at 4:07 am

    Hello peopleca9ecbe275ca898943b135f4d4e16319

62. Eric Reid
    

    December 18th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    I think the takeaway here is what does and does not prove popular to a large number of users. This may not be an important goal for a developer, but it can be money in the bank for a marketer.