Jeremiah Owyang writes today about the emerging field of “News Feed Optimization” which he deems overrated. Basically, the practice is to get notifications from an application into the news feed as often as possible. This will get your application adopted more frequently.
Yes, the News Feed is one useful tool for virally marketing your application. But apps that are too noisy — whether they’re constantly in your news feed or whether you’re always getting asked to add them — have a lot to lose.
Eventually, a lot of these apps start to feel spammy. At the moment, I have requests pending for Zuckerbucks, Compare People and My Questions. I’m not interested in engaging with any of these applications. I’ve ignored hundreds of requests already from my friends to use these applications and similar ones. I rarely invite friends to add applications. If I really like an app and I think my friends will like it as well, I usually use the “share” feature to send them a message.
How do you feel about noisy applications? At what point do they cross the “spam line?”
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Jason Preston 09.03.07 at 11:03 am
I too tend to avoid using the “invite your friends” feature that seems to be built in to most applications.
Mostly, I pick up new applications when I want to interact with one on someone else’s profile. For example, I have the Kyte.tv application installed because I wanted to watch one of Scoble’s videos.
Jeremiah Owyang 09.03.07 at 1:43 pm
Invasive, but sadly ‘Invite your friends’ is a way that apps can get massive adoption.
Teresa Valdez Klein 09.04.07 at 1:51 pm
There has to be a less invasive way of getting apps shared to the people that want them without driving the rest of us nuts. Maybe a ranking system where your friends say what they think about the app. When you’re looking for something useful, you can log in and see what your friends like.