Our buddy Rodney Rumford has a post today on FaceReviews about how half of all the 16,000 facebook apps have fewer than 350 installs. The stats are undeniable—a lot of Facebook apps don’t end up “making it,” in terms of massive user base.
Rodney is right about almost everything in his post: you need to take the time designing an app that will be viral, socially engaging, and make users care. But what I disagree with is this:
What this means is that many applications never even got off the ground and could effectively be considered low noise and a wasted effort of time and money.
I think that’s a bit of an overstatement. I almost hate to point to it again, but you might remember our BlogTips application (which has right about 350 installs, incidentally) had incredible ROI, despite the rather small user base.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll end up saying it again (it’s not that original, people just forget): getting to the right audience is far more important than getting to a large audience.
An app is not low noise and wasted effort if you get to the people who are going to take action, get involved, buy your product, evangelize your message, or whatever else you have in mind. It doesn’t matter if it takes 50 installs, 100, 500, 5,000, or more to do it, it’s whether or not you get them.
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Rodney Rumford 02.11.08 at 5:39 pm
Jason you are right. “I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll end up saying it again (it’s not that original, people just forget): getting to the right audience is far more important than getting to a large audience.”
I was speaking in very general terms about apps. Hitting the high value targeted audience like you guys did with your app is actally a viable strategy.
to my other point… “When designing a facebook strategy for apps you need some very compelling reasons to make users CARE. It needs to do something for them that they find useful, entertaining, share worthy or compelling. Most apps are missing 1, 2, 3 or all 4 of these critical aspects. Thus they effectively remain in the dustbin of application minutia on facebook. Lack of strategy guarantees lack of performance.”
Marketing 101. Know your audience.
Cheers!