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More on 21st century adoption curves

July 4th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Four pillars

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:

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.

Tags: Four pillars

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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