Today Quantcast released some fascinating data about the destination site growth that HotOrNot, Slide, and RockYou have experienced since launching their various Facebook Apps.
Interestingly, however, runaway Facebook successes iLike and Flixster have not seen the same sustained, destination site bounce that HotOrNot, Slide, and RockYou have seen.
Why is this? I think it comes down to how the apps were built. As I’ve written previously, iLike and Flixster were built to be seamless extensions to Facebook. The critical component of this seamlessness is each company’s decision to create content hubs – band pages for iLike and movie and actor pages for Flixster – that reside on Facebook.com.
The alternative, of course, as pursued by companies like Upcoming.org and Yelp, is to force folks to click through to their respective destination sites to get the good stuff – event pages in the case of Upcoming, and local business pages in the case of Yelp.
So which is better? Certainly, the user experience of the iLike and Flixster Facebook apps is superior. Seamlessness may also be a factor in how quickly a Facebook app takes off. But what about from a business model perspective? Given the facts as they exist today, I’d much prefer to be driving traffic to my destination site than allowing my community’s content to be consumed entirely on Facebook. I know how to monetize traffic at home base – I don’t know how to do it on Facebook. I know how to build relationships with my users at home base – I don’t know how to do it on Facebook.
So while companies that build standalone apps for Facebook may have a better shot at getting acquired by Facebook eventually, I’m still not convinced of the economics from the perspective of an independent business. I just don’t know what the standalone apps are getting out of the deal besides some nice branding and potentially astronomical bandwidth costs.
Again, this could all change should Facebook decide to introduce a CPC charge to app publishers for siphoning Facebook traffic back to home base.
From Facebook’s perspective, there’s an odd tension here. Clearly, Facebook would prefer that folks build seamless, standalone apps within the Facebook experience. However, it would seem that there is more incentive for developers to build apps that have heavy link back to home base. This reminds of an old MBA saying about “The folly of hoping for A, while incenting B.” I wonder if Facebook will do something to juggle these incentives – either with the carrot, or with the stick.
For more discussion, see VentureBeat, The Next Net, Andrew Chen, and Snipperoo.
well, this time i've been definitely sure that we need some research work to deal with, thanks a lot for sharing it with us
Posted by: writing services | February 17, 2011 at 07:43 AM
Good advice and I absolutely enjoyed to read this articles, its a good entertainment. I think most of the peoples are brand your advisory column , because its accepting enjoyment. so thanks for your abundant advisory post. I'm inspired by it to finish my Essay Writing Help at last!
Posted by: JameSmith88 | July 27, 2011 at 11:00 PM