Looks like a week is a long time in politics and in social software. Last week I wrote about using Facebook as a proxy for looking at 21st century adoption curves. So far, I haven’t been able to collect information about usage or about age breakdowns, but I’m sure that will be possible soon enough.
In the meantime, let’s see what’s moved:
- All (1375) Up 25%
- Alerts (86) Up 32%
- Business (49) Up 44%
- Chat (57) Up 33%
- Classified (33) Up 18%
- Dating (55) Up 20%
- Education (91) Up 38%
- Events (54) Up 46%
- Fashion (29) Up 16%
- File Sharing (32) Up 33%
- Food and Drink (42) Up 31%
- Gaming (157) Up 14%
- Just for Fun (577) Up 26%
- Messaging (98) Up 17%
- Mobile (35) Up 35%
- Money (37) Up 32%
- Music (79) Up 13%
- Photo (94) Up 34%
- Politics (55) Up 67%
- Sports (49) Up 17%
- Travel (46) Up 15%
- Utility (198) Up 20%
- Video (77) Up 15%
So let’s see. Every single classification moved up at least 10% in a week. Overall the apps were up by a quarter, or averaging over 50 new apps a day. The biggest mover was Politics (!), always an interesting trend in social networking. What fascinates me is the top 5: Politics, Events, Business, Education and Mobile. Between them these 5 classifications added about a quarter of the new apps.
Politics, Events, Business, Education and Mobile. Hmmmmm.
More later.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Stu // Jul 5, 2007 at 7:50 am
It is fascinating. Also check out Marc Andreesen’s writing on it, and how a lot of these aps developers may well become victims of their own success when their app servers get ‘facebooked’ — the most virulent form of marketing known to man…
I also have to marvel at the business model of the Gift application — you pay $1 to email someone a 32×32 icon. That is absolute genius. The FAQ puts it superbly:
Why didn’t I get a free gift?
Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide a free gift sample to all users. As this feature evolves, there is a need to control scarcity and demand. We apologize for any inconvenience.
2 John Dodds // Jul 5, 2007 at 10:04 am
The gift idea debuted (in my consciousness at least) on hotornot and James Hong and Mark Zuckerberg have sat on panels together - so no surprise there.
3 James Shi // Jul 5, 2007 at 5:36 pm
The gifting model has proved to be a hugely viable revenue stream via South Korea’s CyWorld since 2003. I’m not sure how much is being spent on digital gifts today, but the last time I checked (probably a year and a half ago when I was last in Seoul), CyWorld was generating around $300k a day in just digital items (which also includes non-gifts). I’ve been skeptical of the US audience acting in similar ways to S. Korea, but I’m ready to be proved wrong by Facebook.
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