Facebook Apps: You Need To Be In The Head, Not The Tail
Jack Schofield at The Guardian highlights an interesting report by O’Reilly Research, and related comments from Tim O’Reilly (the man who ‘invented the term Web 2.0) about how most of the 5,000 Facebook apps now available have very little uptake.
87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users.
There are some interesting comments on following O’Reilly’s analysis, but my main thought on this is one that applies to almost any discussion of the modern web: forget about the medium (in this case Facebook) and worry about the message (the quality of your app).
So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.
If you’re thinking of developing a Facebook app, substitute the words blogs for apps in Shirky’s quote, and think about whether anyone really needs it, whether anyone will want it. Ask yourself, why anyone should give a sh*t!
