This year we’ve seen the release of social application developer platforms from MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and Yahoo!. Over the same period of time, the popularity of social applications on Facebook - the most mature and advanced social application platform has declined significantly. This decrease in demand for Facebook applications has come while the Facebook user base continued to grow. The people have spoken - and they are not impressed by the first generation of social apps.

The release of the Facebook application platform in June 2007 kicked off a rush by third party developers with over 400,000 registering to create apps in the first 12 months. Social apps are particularly appealing for third party developers because by they are lightweight and easy to build. The most popular social apps have been created by small teams of only 2 or 3 three developers, typically in a short period of time – with constant updates and revisions.

By December 2007, the social app bubble was at its peak and companies like Rock You and Slide had emerged as leaders in the field.

The Bubble Bursts

In the fall of 2007, leading social app developers were cranking out a series of formulaic apps. By observing their users very carefully, they were able to grow their apps very quickly. They optimized their apps for new user installs, typically through forced invites or apps whose basic premise was to be spread around to as many users as possible.

At social app conferences, developers were told to gear their apps toward 16 year old girls, who were drawn toward the latest fads and more than willing to spam all their friends with invite requests. Around this time, many began to observe the irrationality of these apps and their lack of long term viability.

Things have basically been downhill ever since. The trend in the charts below, showing daily application usage of the most popular Facebook apps is hard to miss.

The demise of the “viral social games” phenomena, where the whole point of the app is to spread it around to your friends – is perhaps most pointedly demonstrated by Zombies. This app was originally so popular that it spawned several versions of itself from the same developers including Vampires, Werewolves and Slayers, all of whom have now succumb to the same fate as the original.

The Future of Social Apps

The era of flighty, pointless apps which provide no utility to users and force them to invite all their friends before they even get to try the app is over. Good riddance. Like free credit and lack of oversight, the popularity of these apps may have helped grow things in the beginning, but clutter and spam from useless apps is now the primary complaint that users have about social networks.

There are however, a couple of different types of applications which run on these networks and remain popular. One example would be the apps produced by Zynga, which focuses mainly on building classic games like Poker or Battleship and connects people together via the social network for a real world, digital interaction.

The most popular application on Facebook right now is Causes from “Project Agape”, which helps people rally around important causes and encourage their friends to donate money to charitable organizations.

Engagement of this has been primarily driven by the US election and will no doubt slow down after November 4th. However, the popularity of Causes has clearly shown the potential for social apps which help organize people of similar interests around activities in the real world.

Sources:

  • http://developer.facebook.com
  • http://adonomics.com/
  • http://www.developeranalytics.com

Popularity: 47% [?]