In case you needed any proof that the No.1 activity on Facebook is goofing off, the chart above from Flowing Data shows the number of applications by category. About half of the 23, 160 applications on Facebook fall into the “Just for Fun” or “Gaming” categories. “Dating” and “Chat” are also high up the list. “Money,” “Classifieds,” and “File Sharing” are the least popular.
Facebook is a marketplace of sorts. It stands to reason that application developers are chasing the categories where they are a seeing the most usage. No surprises here, but a chart like this really drives the point home.
See all
Post
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.
Not surprising really. Kind of a shame but that was the original purpose.
LOL… very interesting.
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.
Nice Cyndi Lauper reference (kinda). The 80’s are back and it is very scary.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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?
That’s really cool! I wonder if it would benefit me to make a FB app for my site…what do you guys think?
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.
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?
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.
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”.
not too surprised - I assume ‘procrastination’ is included in ‘just for fun’
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.
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/
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.
cool i guess i’ll list my gaming app under “just for fun.”
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
Interesting that, “file sharing” did make it into a category…
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.
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”.
“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*
yah
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
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?
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.
I like business application in facebook.
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.
@29 - Chris is DEAD ON. This is not news, just something taken out of context.
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.
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
hi
Nokia Conversations Blog Nokia’ s Conversation Blog has launched an extended discussion on its myriad US service problems. I’ m happy to report that there has been some progress (small, but real) from Nokia in terms of addressing it US service problems, which I’ ve written about extensively. First, here’ s their most concrete step forward so far: Today, Nokia announced that the long- awaited firmware update for the US N95- 3 should be available by early June. Note that this does not mean Nokia has improved…