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.
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.
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.
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.