Any Facebook user these days (which is pretty much all of us now) knows how potentially annoying apps can be. From biting vampires to “what literary time period are you,” we’ve all seen our fair share of apps we wonder why our friends use. But is that all Facebook apps are about? Just fun and games?
Well, not quite. Facebook apps certainly do attract the crowd of folks who are looking for some fun (Solitaire and Mindsweeper must have started to get old), but there’s a huge number of apps that have a somewhat more noble purpose for existence.
To get started, point your browser to Facebook’s Application Directory.
Click on the “Most Active Users” tab and you’ll see all of Facebook’s apps based on monthly active users.
Here’s a list of the top 20: (as of May 15)
Living Social: 31.7 million monthly active users
RockYou Live (formerly Super Wall): 20.3 million
Causes: 14.7 million
Movies (Flixter): 14.5 million
We’re Related: 14 million
Top Friends: 13.3 million
Texas HoldEm Poker: 12.2 million
Pet Society: 10.8 million
Mafia Wars: 10.5 million
Music (iLike): 8.8 million
Zoosk: 8.5 million
Birthday Cards: 7.9 million
Pass a Drink: 6.9 million
Slide FunSpace: 6.7 million
(Lil) Green Patch: 5.8 million
Bumper Sticker: 5.5 million
YoVille: 5.1 million
Mobile: 5 million
MindJolt Games: 4.8 million
Sketch Me: 4.6 million
At first glance, these apps seem to fall into wildly diverse categories, appealing to all kinds of niche audiences. But by digging a little deeper, we find that most of them fall neatly into categories aligned along some basic human needs. Here’s how I think they play out:
Entertainment Utility
Apps that have some basic entertainment value, typically silly games but serve their purpose. Apps that fall into this category include: Mafia Wars, Pet Society, Birthday Cards, Pass a Drink, Bumper Sticker, and MindJolt Games. These kinds of apps dominate Facebook and also have the highest annoyance-potential depending on how much of this we get in our news feed.
Texas HoldEm Poker is one of the best known apps in this category. Be careful clicking below – you might get sucked into the world of Facebook poker in one fell swoop:
Connections that Brand
Apps that connect us to people with similar interests, at the same time, branding ourselves. Think of these apps as a way to draw a picture of ourselves, or even find out what our picture truly looks like, based on the groups of people we affiliate with. Apps that fall into this category include: We’re Related, Zoosk, Top Friends, and (Lil) Green Patch. These apps don’t necessarily help us discover new things, but they do “officially” connect us in little groups to people we want to be seen as associating with.
Causes is a great example of this kind of app. I’ve pulled a screenshot of a serious one, Keep the Arts in Public Schools that has over 800,000 members, but you also have ones like “Save Water: Drink Champagne” that are more fun but also says something about the person who’s added it to their profile.
Discovery
These are apps that also connect us with others, but are focused on introducing us to new media, new thinking, new everything. These apps often use algorithms to eerily figure out what we’d be interested based on the crowd we associate with. Apps that fall into this category include: Living Social, Music/iLike, RockYou Live, and Slide FunSpace. Anyone who’s used these apps before know that you discovered something new as a result of connecting with your friends.
Movies/Flixter is one of the most successful discovery apps, particularly its movie compatibility test feature:
What Marketers Can Learn From the Best
As marketers, we should take note that none of the top 20 are created by traditional brands to sell anything. All the top apps, silly games or not, tap into our innate desire to either be entertained, to connect with others or to discover new things.
When we develop apps to drive brand awareness, preference or loyalty and want a strong, loyal base of users, remember to take a look at these top apps and not see them as just a jumble of apps with no purpose, but rather apps that meet a few basic human social needs. We should run any app we think about developing through these filters and identify which need our app would satisfy. In the meantime, try adding one of these apps above and find out which ones are most compelling to you.
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