Please forgive typos, I'm blasting this out as it comes in.
Moderator: Dave McClure
Panelists: Slide BizDev, Bunchball CEO, Bebo Platform Head, and one more (I didn't catch the company name)....
What is user engagement? People coming back to use your service. Example? Scrabulous.
Bebo - engagment is about capturing the attention of their users.
CEO Bunchball - How invested is a user in using your application. Example: The Sixty One - music discovery site.
Jared, Slide - Engagement has to do with getting good content to the user, about communication. Interaction between user and network.
Flixster is an example of a deep, engaged vertical.
Measuring User Engagment.... what are the specific metrics, any tools?
Slide: Daily active users is important, but it's more than that.
Session time, what they're doing, depth of experience, combination of what they're doing and how often and how long they are doing it for.
Is there a specific number?
PVs per visit, and they track uninstalls carefully.
Bunchball: track changes to applications. Persistence is a big thing for increasing engagement.
How often are people doing the things that are investing themselves in the app.
Bebo: Looking to reward apps with high engagement / high quality. Take emphasis off of viral tricks, and put it on engagement.
Look at uninstall rates, and block rates for apps. Benign reasons for blocking? More granular in terms of user feedback is better.
Same metrics as Facebook?
Bebo is not reporting daily active users. Trying to come up with the right metrics to expose engagement.
Three main metrics: Daily Actives, Bounce Rates, PVs per visit.
How long does it take for someone to get tired of the app. And why do they get tired? (internal tools, internal metrics)
Monetization: advertising and CPA.
What type of apps and features are most successful for user engagement?
Bunchball: user centered design is key. Model seems to be throwing stuff out there, seeing what sticks, and abandoning the others.
to Bebo: what features are working? What do you consider good behavior for an app?
Apps that understand the Bebo audience do better. What resonates with one might not resonate with another.
Self expression is huge on Bebo - while FB is more about utility.
Apps that are more about ME do well on Bebo. Example: a gift app that you give the gift, but you can also tell people what YOU want on your profile.
Flipping gifts on its head to focus on self expression.
Competition also works. Virtual currency is interesting.
Great user engagement features? Any interaction between users trigger a notification for reciprocity. Someone pokes you?
Poke them back. They also push meeting strangers - you can't do that on FB, you can only do it through the application.
Creating scarcity with your applications, capturing new data not available on FB.
Slide: thoughts on user engagement. Gaming engages users immediately. But the challenge is keeping them coming back.
Slide doesn't focus on the shorter term stuff. Scrabulous is an exception - it's a communication form to tell somebody you're smarter then them.
Slide tries to expose content - best case, when a friend sends another some content.
Dave: Bebo does not expose app activity to users who don't have the app.
Dave: why is this? Isn't engagement the sign of a good app? Feeds are not a good means for app discovery now.
Therefore devs are forced to focus on viral tricks, notification spam.
Bebo's Response: It's a fair argument. Feeds could be about discovery. But, we've given plenty of channels for discovery.
(dave: but those channels are spammy). Jessica: but activity feeds could be spammed too.
But, we are thinking about greater feed reach as a tool to reward highly engaged (well behaved?) apps.
(lawrence's note: this is the interesting stuff, hope this is coming through)
Bebo: you shouldn't dread checking notifications. If a channel burns out, it doesn't help anybody. We're taking our time and doing it carefully.
Dave: this could be a real separator in the competition betwee OpenSOcial and FB Platform. Whoever opens the feed will attract more developer.
Slide: I'm not conviced that users respond to invites to add an application. As a user, you don't know the value.
But you do understand your relationship with your friend. A feed item demonstration could be more effective than just a bare invitation.
The problem is: when a channel is exposed, app developers are going to go after that.
Dave: are you guys creating your own feeds where you control the rules? Gaming feeds, Top Friends Feed...
Slide: yes.
To Bunchball: Feeds helpful or not helpful?
It's a hard problem. How do you make apps discoverable without being spammy. People will optimize for whatever is measured.
Dave: How do you make decisions about distribution, versus engagement, versus monetization.
Slide: here's the order: Growth, Depth, Money. First, how do you get them to add it. Then, how do you get people to go deeper, and come back.
Bunchball: totally focused on engagement. Growth is organic - we've never focused on it.
To Bebo: is there any thought to enabling inter app currency?
Jessica: there's thoughts about everything.
Dave: what does AOL think? (lawrence: ouch)
Jessica: I have no idea what they think, or what they have been thinking for the last 10 years (lawrence: ouch again)
Jessica: that was a joke.
Jessica: I can't comment on whether we're doing cross app currency, but it's interesting.
Virtual currency is based on fundamental human behavior. Points drive behavior. People are predictably irrational.
Dave One Tip from each panelist:
Slide: Algoritmic way to recommend things. Three Super Poke options are chosen by algorithm.
Bunchball: Give people missions. More trophies, more challenges, more things to finish.
Dave: people are simple, give them stuff to click on.
Bebo: Keep things within two clicks. Make it easy.
Last Panelist: single button request form - one button to send an invite to a user.
Big screen with lots of little checkboxes is not the only way to send invites / notifications.
