On Facebook, Girls And Boys Just Want To Have Fun

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1. Christian Flickinger
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 am

   Interesting. I am doing a post soon with some more data on girl vs. boy users, I will be sure to ping this as additional info.

2. Matt
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 am

   Not surprising really. Kind of a shame but that was the original purpose.

3. Russell
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 am

   LOL… very interesting.

4. Craig
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 am

   While the applications are only a fun application, this still leaves a lot of room for corporations to build those fun applications and take a lot of advantage of targetting or data mining, which few are currently doing a strong job of.

5. JP Werlin
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am

   Nice Cyndi Lauper reference (kinda). The 80’s are back and it is very scary.

6. dubc
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 am

   This is something we know, yet people are still trying to figure out why ad campaigns are performing so poorly. This is not an ideal context for serving ads.

7. NextInstinct
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 am

   Nice breakdown.

   But I think to have a perfectly scientific analysis,
   we’d have to see [know exactly] what the ’sell’ was
   get users to add apps at the moment they did.

   There might be a small change in those results.

   In other words, what was their actual impression of it’s usefulness
   and actual function when they decided to add.

   I know I’ve added apps thinking they’d be much more
   useful from the description, only to find they were
   only for fun, and many of them, incredibly stupid!

8. christina
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 am

   most applications only reflects what developers *think* facebook users will do… most used applications might tell a slightly different story. for example, there are a lot of business aps, but are folks just hoping to tap into the endlessly touted but rarely realized business application of Facebook?

9. Suraj Singh
   

   May 2nd, 2008 at 9:40 am

   Why is this not a surprise? FB is a terrible waste of time, as well as a huge invasion on our privacy. Thanks again to TechCrunch for hitting a nail on the head. Great to see this reality graphed out so simply. This calls for a service that actually benefits our life-style and relationships in some way.

10. Jez
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 9:48 am

    Surprising to see music so far down the list. I’d have thought “I’m listening to” type widgets would be fairly popular. Lots of people I know seem to have them. Also, why is education so high? What kind of Facebook app is educational?

11. Mike
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 am

    That’s really cool! I wonder if it would benefit me to make a FB app for my site…what do you guys think?

12. Alan Brown
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 9:57 am

    Perhaps a same survey of television programs would show a similar distribution.

    Of course, this seems to just be counting applications and not usage, so if many people are using an app all the time but its in a category with few apps, it would seem to be insignificant in this particular view of things.

13. jon
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:09 am

    I would assume that when the hype of the platform settles, and application fatigue really kicks in, apps in verticals that represent strong social agglutinations like politics and fashion will start to grow..

    also, anyone has similar data for soc.nets like myspace, bebo and hi5?

14. Phil
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:09 am

    Suraj Singh: I’m sure you’re working on the NEXT BEST GREATEST SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE 7.0 and it will be amazing because existing sites like Facebook and MySpace are so terrible and everyone hates them.

    Anyway, this chart is somewhat misleading since most apps are in two categories.

15. Ryan Merket
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 am

    Erick, this really has to do with the lack of categories Facebook provides. As someone who has built a number of Facebook applications, there just simply isn’t enough categories that match the application types. The only “general” category is “Just for Fun”.

16. Alex
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 am

    not too surprised - I assume ‘procrastination’ is included in ‘just for fun’

17. Scott
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 am

    I think this is more of an indication of low hanging fruit. Making true productive applications is hard, making zombies and werewolves is a weekend project. To provide a better breakdown, I think it would be best to analyze usage, not just number of apps. Plenty of those just for fun apps probably don’t even work or are clones as people play around with the platform.

18. Fabian Schonholz
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 am

    And this is a surprise because and news because? I have long argue that the real value of social networks is utility applications and not toys. As long as toys prevail the real value will not be achieved. Do not get me wrong, I think toys should also be part of the equation, but a small part.

    http://www.fabianschonholz.com.....-facebook/

19. Cindy Szponder
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Hmmm. Networking didn’t even make the list, so I can see why so many favor Facebook and LinkedIn instead. It also follows that it would be a great site for those creating games, interested in gaming, etc.

20. snyggast
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 am

    cool i guess i’ll list my gaming app under “just for fun.”

21. David
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 am

    I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised at this. Facebook’s first adopters were college kids. It was built for college kids to have fun…so I guess its just natural the blogosphere is confused when they see these numbers…

    I wrote about this months ago:
    http://imbuildingsomethinghere.com/?p=123

22. YDRIVE
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Interesting that, “file sharing” did make it into a category…

23. j@CorePage
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 am

    I’m curious…

    Can anyone share any success they’ve had in using it for business?

    Do you think once this generation graduates the business use will increase?
    Love to hear from you!

    _j
    community creator
    CorePage | Know more. Sell faster.

24. Jim M
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am

    At least someone out there is having fun..I’m working all day Our Facebook apps had different demographic usage in terms of men/women. But I’m with snyggast. I’m moving our apps into “Just for Fun”.

25. funfmal
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am

    “just for fun” = “other”

    FB allows you to categorize apps under a number of different categories.

    The distribution is mathematically flawed, but probably true nonetheless.

    f*

26. david bowie
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am

    yah

27. kevin gao
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 am

    its interesting that some of the more seriously monetizable categories - e.g., travel, food, business are so low. not surprising, but i guess they have room to move up

28. emma
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 am

    i am okay with young people having accounts (out of college), sad is when you see the older generation waisting time creating these. what are they thinking?

29. Chris
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Every statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Although “Just for Fun” has the highest total, it doesn’t necessarily mean the sum of those apps has the most users. Of the 23,000 Facebook apps, probably 50% are dead or get less than 100 users per day. A better way to measure which categories are popular is to go through Adonomics.com, sort by daily actives, then categorize each app and sum up totals.

    And in case people don’t know, the categorization of apps (”Just for Fun”, “Dating”, etc.) is done by developers, not by Facebook. Developers are asked to choose two categories among a list of 20 provided by Facebook. Developers often choose category X and “Just for Fun”. Category X is usually more specific like (Dating, Gaming), where “Just for Fun” really means nothing. Its in the eye of the beholder.

    I agree with the article’s statement that the “No.1 activity on Facebook is goofing off”, but most Internet usage is goofing off. So that’s not a revelation. Reading the news at work is goofing off. Watching YouTube videos is goofing off. Checking your email every 30 minutes, because you don’t want to do real work, is goofing off. Reading TechCrunch at work is goofing off.

30. Limodou
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    I like business application in facebook.

31. Bill Snyder
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    I would be careful how you read this. It’s implied that the types of apps developed correlate to the demand. This may be the case, but it’s also worth noting that creating a silly, stupid app takes a lot less resources than creating something that is useful.

32. Ryan Merket
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    @29 - Chris is DEAD ON. This is not news, just something taken out of context.

33. David
    

    May 2nd, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    I think this illustrates what the gaming industry has already figured out–that playing games online with your friends is fun. There is an entire emerging category of applications being developed to enable just that–having fun with friends while online. To learn more, check out the Social Gaming Summit (http://www.socialgamingsummit.com) in San Francisco on June 13th.

34. Stephanie
    

    May 4th, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Two things:
    1) As was mentioned above, what is the actual demand/usuage. Should we assume that they map to the “type” of applications being developed.
    2) I agree completely with Suraj Singh above on what the real power of social networking should be. I’d love to know what lifestyle and relationship functionality people would find most compelling in a social network that is geared towards an older audience that has real life issues to deal with and not as much time for dumb fun. Any thoughts would be very appreciated, either hear or feel free to email me (am I allowed to do this?) at stephaniesarka@yahoo.com

35. nolird
    

    May 8th, 2008 at 1:05 am

    hi