Disclaimer: The following post contains three very embarrassing - but entirely true - confessions by the writer. Please see them simply as attempts to prove his point and try to forget them after reading the post and understanding the point.
Facebook launched their chat feature last week and many are calling the creation another brilliant, inevitable step toward Facebook becoming the world’s next operating system. But while it was certainly inevitable and will probably, like most other Facebook creations (except for the Beacon of course) be a resounding success, I think this one is going to take a little more time than some of the other groundbreaking features they’ve recently introduced. Even more time than the initially hated, but now addictive News Feed - the goat cheese of new Facebook features.
Here’s why I think Facebook Chat isn’t such an easy sell:
I’m on Facebook all day long (embarrassing confession #1). This is not hyperbole, it is fact. If at any point in the day you were to look at my open Firefox browser you would without fail always see a Facebook tab. Even if it is just one of five running tabs, Facebook is always there. And yeah, I have justification since Ignighter is a Facebook application and I have to “do work” within Facebook, but trust me, it’s just a very convenient excuse.
Occasionally I just leave it open to my Homepage, but more often than not it’s open to poolside photos of the recent Fire Island weekend getaway of one of my Facebook friends that I probably don’t even know that well (embarrassing confession #2). What we do on Facebook, all the stalking, and gawking, and voyeurism (well that’s what I do at least) is really humiliating. Whether we want to admit it or not, Facebook is a guilty pleasure.
And I think this really cuts to heart of why I have 1,307 Facebook friends (EXTREMELY embarrassing confession #3) and I’ve yet to see more than 54 “online” at one time. You can be on Facebook and not publicly declare yourself “online”. And while I’m not sure if everybody else keeps Facebook up all day like I do, I’ve got to believe that more than 4% of my friends are on at any given time. If they are on, but just too ashamed to promote it all day, then Facebook chat is going to face quite an uphill climb moving forward. And if it’s true that only 4% of my friends are online at any given time (and I find this unlikely), then Facebook as an operating system has an even steeper climb ahead.
What do you think?
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April 29th, 2008
Posted by
Adam |
About Ignighter, Applications, facebook, ignighter |
Today Cynopsis Digital released an updated list of the top Facebook applications:
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Top Facebook Widgets as of March 30, 2008
Rank Application Developer Installs Active % Active New
1 Super Wall RockYou! 26,799,900 1,875,993 7% -2,739,329
2 FunWall Slide, Inc. 28,919,417 1,735,165 6% 1,567,460
3 Top Friends Slide, Inc. 27,795,133 1,667,708 6% 2,162,276
4 Bumper Sticker 9,771,025 781,682 8% -422,975
5 Friends For Sale! 6,073,130 607,313 10% 348
6 Scrabulous 3,201,044 576,188 18% -33,226
7 Texas HoldEm Poker 8,011,386 560,797 7% 566,523
8 Owned! 3,134,087 470,113 15% 103,611
9 iLike iLike, inc 13,457,700 403,731 3% -400,633
10 R U Interested? SNAP Interactive 9,779,650 391,186 4% 1,369,430
Source: Developer Analytics
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I found it especially interesting to note that instead of calling them “apps” they were described as “widgets”. This is a telling moniker because at least in my head, there exists a large disconnect between the level of functionality you’d expect out of something called an application vs. something called a widget. When I think of the word application, I think of something that requires active involvement. Microsoft Word is an application. When I think of a widget, I think of passive involvement. A desktop fish tank for example. If you look at the list you can see that for the most part, the top ones actually are widgets and they are popular because they work well within the context of Facebook - passive involvement. Since its launch, people have been going on Facebook to fly through photos of their friend’s ski trip or to look up that hot girl they met at a mutual friend’s party the night before.
The current context of Facebook is that it’s a place for a quick fix. A place where you go for a dose of immediate, often mindless time wasting while you sit at your office computer. That’s why the top apps are for the most part all widgets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to bash Superwall or Top Friends, or any of the other top apps because they are clearly entertaining and viral and if they provided no value to the user, then they wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are. And for the most part, I love them too! I’m just saying that Facebook and its users have yet to reach the point where they are using Facebook to improve their real lives. Improving one’s real life often requires stepping out from behind the computer and entering the real world. And none of the top apps are encouraging of that.
But that’s ok because apps are young and, like I said, this is the current context of Facebook. There’s a pretty big gap in functionality and expectation between asking a user to “SuperBoink” (if this was a real world action it would probably require consent) somebody else and asking them to plan an offline date with their friends, I get that. But the gap exists because the first, most popular Facebook apps on the scene created a norm. And the norm is a widget that can tell other people “Where I’ve Been” but not actually help them to go some place new.
When Facebook opened up their platform last year and invited outside developers to create apps, many people saw it as Facebook’s mission to become the next popular operating system. Rather than just being a new Friendster or Myspace, Facebook opened their platform in an attempt to be the next Windows. This is a bold ambition with unlimited potential and many may argue that they are well on their way toward achieving this goal. But I will contend that until Facebook and its apps start encouraging people to use the site to improve their REAL lives, they still have a ways to go.
But for now, I need to run, it’s my turn in Scrabulous.
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March 31st, 2008
Posted by
Adam |
About Ignighter, Applications |
