Asi Sharabi wrote an an excellent post analyzing the top Facebook applications trends. All of his info is based on the Facebook analytics site Adonomics (previously Appaholic), which provides all sorts of great statistics regarding all Facebook applications.

Here are some stats for example which may blow your mind:

• There are 609,690,058 installs across 9,781 apps on Facebook with over 168,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.
• These applications were used 40,418,045 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $524,855,449.
• Facebook has approximately 56 million Unique Active Users in the past 30 days and a valuation of $15 billion.
• This translates to $267 per active user

While analyzing the figures on the most popular applications, Asi “looked for meaningful themes and patterns regarding the social needs as well as the social-communicative roles that take effect with these applications.” This analysis should be quite valuable for users, marketers, and developers in understanding why certain applications are more successful than others.

From his research, Asi concluded that the most successful Facebook applications fall under 3 main categories:

Identity Formation - 43%
Phatic Communication - 37%
Other - 20%

Identity Formation

I’ve already written in this blog about the human need to define one self and interact with others while receiving feedback from our community. The fact that identity formation applications are so popular only emphasizes this point. It is important for us as individuals to define ourselves and at the same time present ourselves to the public in the way that we want to be perceived. 18% of the most popular applications are self-presentation tools. Examples of such applications are: My personality, Likeness and iLike. It would be interesting to find out how many Facebook users actually answer the personality questionnaires truthfully and how many answer with the goal of receiving a certain result which would help them be perceived a certain way by the public. Asi also notes that such “personal” applications intertwined into our public profiles depict the blurring of boundaries between our public and personal selves (you can see my related post here).

24% of the top applications are collective identity formation tools. These are the applications where the user asks his friends to take part in his identity formation. Applications such as Hot or Not or Are You Interested define our social need for flirtatious interaction and the need to be perceived by others as attractive or desired, whereas applications such as Define Me emphasize our personal need for feedback from our network.

We also see that many of these types of applications are what I call extensions of our personal selves. Applications such as (fluff)Friends allow others to express their affection for us by petting or feeding our pet (which symbolizes ourselves). My Aquarium allows others to show their love by sending us fish or feeding them. The constant reassurance of love and affection from the public fills us with joy.

Asi also points out an interesting pattern in the collective identity formation group of applications which are more truth-driven, dangerous, and hence more exciting. This is where the element of reality TV comes into the picture on Facebook. Honesty Box for instance, allows users to send each other anonymous messages, removing any inhibitions they that might have and letting them be completely truthful with you. Another example is the SocialMoth application which shows you anonymous confessions from your friends.  These applications feed our desire for secrets and gossip, as well as the thrill of the unknown (what others TRULY think about us).

Phatic Communication

37% of the most popular applications on Facebook fall under this category. These applications allow us to be in constant connection with our network without exchanging information or ideas.

As Grant writes:

“The phatic messages “stack” nicely, each message presupposing and building on its predecessor.  These messages are:

1. I exist.
2. I’m ok.
3. You exist.
4. You’re ok.
5. The channel is open. 
6. The network exists.
7. The network is active.
8. The network is flowing.

When I use Twitter or Facebook to say that I am entertaining my cat, no one, I’m pretty, sure gives a good God damn that I am entertaining my cat. But they are reminded that they have someone called Grant McCracken exists in their network. 

This is not nothing.  Facebook sustains social knowledge and networks that begin in conferences and then fade almost immediately until a couple of months later we have a hard time attaching a face to that business card still banging around in our briefcase.  A “newsflash” about my cat helps keep the network node called Grant McCracken from blinking out.”

By using these phatic communication tools we remind people that we exist, that the network is live and kickin’, and that communication is flowing. Actions such as poking, updating our status, and sending people gifts or drinks, characterize this sort of communication.  

Other

Social Organization tools make up 3% of the top applications on Facebook. Top Friends (which is the #1 most popular application on Facebook), My Heritage and Circle of Friends allow us to organize our friends and create some sort of hierarchy or relationship tree between them. As we add on more friends, these applications become more useful to us. Since we as individuals can only truly hold close relationships with a limited amount of people, these tools fulfill our need to bond with certain users more than others and present our close relationships to the world.

Communication tools make up 9% of the most popular applications list. Super Wall and FunWall are the #2 and #3 top applications on Facebook (respectively). These applications allow us to better interact with our friends, send them videos we like, and fun messages. Mobile, Instant Messaging and SMS messaging tools fall under this category as well.

Games make up 8% of the top applications list. These include card games, puzzles, and others. Here’s just another way that we interact with others on Facebook without needing to verbally express ourselves. 

Another interesting fact I found is that “Causes” is the #10 most popular application. This definitely shows us the human need to be socially involved and active in causes that we relate to and our desire to increase public awareness and support for such “personal” crusades.

In conclusion, we need to ask ourselves what information can we gather from this data? What do these statistics tell us about user behavior on Facebook, and more importantly, on the Web? How can we create better and more successful applications that will rise “above the noise” of the thousands of applications that already exist?

Asi writes in his post: “…although these top applications have millions of users installs they nevertheless have very few percentages of daily active users. In fact, not more than a quarter of the 100 most popular applications have more than 10% daily active users.” This is fact that we definitely need to look at more closely and examine. It seems like most of the applications that are currently offered are what I call “Vanilla Apps”. They are fun and sweet but not necessarily useful or productive tools for the users. Where will the future lead us? When will we be able to install a hidden application (only visible to us) which shows us our bank balance or allows us to do financial transactions? Do we even want such applications to be available on this platform? 

Food for thought….

Here is a a new Public Service Announcement regarding the Medical Side Effects of Social Networking Addiction.

Created by: Jeffrey Sass 

Starring: Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Seth Harwood, Ed Roberts, Laura “Pistachio” Fitton

I have covered MeeMix a few times on my blog already as I am a big fan of this site. MeeMix is a personalized internet radio community which aims at identifying individual taste and taste prediction in music using its own behavioral-based algorithm and additional methodologies.  MeeMix takes into account your behavior on the site (for example, which songs you added to your favorites) and uses it to predict what music you might like to listen to in the future.

I met this week with Gilad Shlang, the CEO of MeeMix, who gave me the scoop on a few new features that will soon be launched on the site….so get ready, this is exciting stuff!

I will start with a few new features which have already been uploaded on the site:

Mee Feeds - Mee Feeds allow you to see all your friends activity on the site: What stations or songs they added to their favorites, what Meeps they added (I will later explain what a Meep is), who befriended whom, who updated their mood, etc. Mood on MeeMix is just like your status update on Facebook. You can now update your mood letting your friends know exactly what you’re up to.

Gallery Enhancement - Now when you click on any photo, it’s enlarged in the center of the page plus you can also add tags to any of your photos which will later lead to easier searches on the site.

Meeps - Meeps are your comments. You can Meep about any artist, album, or song and let everyone know exactly what you think of it. This feature is part of the Player so when you listen to a song you can at the same time check out the related Meeps - who Meeped what and add your own Meep. You can also reply to someone else’s Meep. There are three kinds of sorting options for Meeps: Interesting Meeps - Meeps with the most comments, Online Meeps - Meeps written by people who are online now, and Friends Meeps - Meeps written by your friends.

Favorites upgrade: Now adding songs to your favorites is easier than ever. When you click favorites (the heart icon) you will be presented with the album song list where you can check or uncheck any song. These songs will appear more than others in your station.

And now for the new stuff….

The Talk - This new feature will soon appear on Mee People home and in each station page. Each station in MeeMix has a “Station Home” where members can chat about the station with the Mee’J. The Talk will show on which station people are most actively talking (chatting). The implication of this feature is that there will be live conversations at all times on each station and each of these stations will inevitably become its own mini social network. This will also imply that the members of each station will have more involvement in what happens on each station and which songs, albums are played. For instance, groups will be able to take votes on what songs they want to listen to or which artists should be added to the station.

Artist or Track Block - Like a station but annoyed by a certain artist? Soon you will be able to block any artist or song from a music station you like.

Mee Journey - This new feature will appear on all members profiles.  It will list all their thoughts, Meeps that they posted or responded to, station ratings they gave, photo uploads, new stations they opened, their moods, and more. Basically it will display their whole journey on MeeMix.

Enhanced right panel - If you’ve used MeeMix already you probably noticed that on the right panel appears all the information regarding you - your avatar, friends list, etc. Very soon this right panel will get a major facelift. You will be able to “browse” the person’s thoughts, favorites, stations, and also send him/her a personal message right from there.

All these new features are scheduled to be launched by the end of this month.

Another major scoop which I will tell you about is MeeMix’s upcoming Integration with Twitter. This integration will allow any MeeMix member to update his friends on what song or station he’s listening to, what album he added to his favorites, and more.

I believe that the new MeeMix site is much more user friendly and pleasing to the eye. Many of MeeMix’s features which were unnoticeable until now are much more emphasized on the pages. MeeMix is taking musical taste and interaction to a whole new level. Each station will now become its own mini universe where members can interact with one another and share their thoughts and feelings.

There is one feature which I haven’t yet told you about. I am saving this one for a special post, so stay tuned

Allen Stern wrote a very interesting post recently about how people such as Robert Scoble use Facebook and Twitter as more of a publicity network than a social network to brand themselves and expose their videos, posts. Currently Scoble has 6,892 followers on Twitter and 4,892 friends on Facebook. He has been complaining about the fact that Facebook limits him to only 5,000 friends.

When looking at Mashable’s account on Twitter, we also see Pete Cashmore twittering only new posts on Mashable and nothing else. As Allen points out:

“A social networking tool becomes a publicity tool when “I speak, you speak, I reply, you reply” becomes “I speak, you listen”.

In all honesty, while at first I used Twitter for social purposes, now I find myself twittering mostly about my latest blog posts and using Facebook mainly for my social interactions with people. For me Twitter has become quite a difficult platform to interact with friends as random thoughts and links are being continously thrown on my screen. Facebook on the other hand allows me to interact with my friends in so many different and interesting ways that I hardly need an additional platform to do that. With all due respect, Twitter has merely become for me one of the many applications that I use on Facebook.

It is true that many bloggers and site owners use both platforms (and others) to expose their posts/messages to the world. As Allen writes:

“Are these new publicity networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) the new press release? Think about it for a second, a press release is sent out to x journalists, news providers, etc. These new publicity networks do the same thing except in a quicker, more efficient way. In fact, Marshall over at RWW says these publicity networks are paying his rent. Naturally I am not suggesting that everyone uses these networks in a publicity-oriented manner, but it seems many of the smart marketers are doing so. As long as the people attached to your account (personal or business) understand that’s the use, then it’s a perfect marketing opportunity. In fact, these publicity networks may just overtake RSS in the long-term. And if you are working with a social media consultant who isn’t leveraging these new publicity networks where appropriate, you need to find a new consultant.”

I agree with Allen. All these social networks are vital tools for any marketer today. However, marketers must remember that conversation is a crucial part of the marketing process today. You must offer friends relevant and interesting content in order to catch their attention. Therefore whatever way you use your networks, make sure to continuously offer them content that interests them and serves their needs as well as yours. Choosing your friends based on common interests (such as Web 2.0 for example) is one way of ensuring that you are delivering news that will probably interest them and serve their purposes as well.

I have written in the past about SuTree.com, a site which aggregates instructional “how to” videos. I really liked the concept of SuTree from the time it launched six months ago, as it offered users a one-stop-shop to find instructional videos on any topic of their choosing. SuTree aggregates videos from 5min, VideoJug, MetaCafe, and more. The only criticism I initially had regarding the site was its lack of community features. Users had no profile pages and could not connect with one another. Today SuTree has relaunched its site with all the needed community features and much much more.

Each member can now create his own profile detailing his interests (topics that he is interested in and wants to learn) with the use of tags. These tags can help other users find friends on the site based on common interests, talk to them, and ask them questions by leaving a message on their blackboard. Members can also list contact details, videos they liked, courses they joined, list of their friends on the site, and more.

Sutree has also add a “Courses” feature. A course on SuTree is a set of specific instructional videos teaching a certain topic. Every registered user can create a course. The creator of the course can decide the order of the videos, add his own personal comments and guidelines to each video, and manage a bulletin board for all the members of the course. This feature is intended for people who consider themselves experts in a certain field and who can’t or haven’t filmed videos of their own. For example, a mathematics teacher can create a course under the heading “preparation for the 10th grade” and integrate into it as many video segments as he likes from different sources. He can also add his own guidelines and comments to each segment and send it to all his students.

SuTree has also increased the number of video segments on the site by a 100% since it first launched. Today there are over 10,000 video segments on SuTree from 248 different sites. Yossi Maaravi, the CEO of SuTree, tells me: “SuTree’s vision is that any instructional video that is available online will be indexed in SuTree.” 

Every section on the site (videos, courses and people) now has tags. These tags help the users search and navigate the site between the different sections. SuTree has now improved its internal search mechanism and while navigating and searching the site, the user receives relevant results on any topic in regards to video segments, courses, and people. If you use FireFox or Internet Explorer 7, you can also add the SuTree search box to your browser.

In regards to the upload of content to the site, in addition to the upload of content from users and the SuTree team, the site currently supports automatic indexing of video segments from partner sites such as about.com, foodwishes.com, 5min.com (as mentioned before), viewdo.com and many more. Automatic indexing requires SuTree’s approval and is implemented using RSS feeds of partnering sites.

SuTree is also offering two great new widgets. Site owners or bloggers can now embed the widgets which enable their readers to easily search for instructional videos on SuTree directly from their site. You can check out the widget I added on my sidebar.

In addition, every visitor on SuTree can now subscribe to receive an RSS feed of all the latest videos posted on the site, videos relating to a specific category, or videos by tag.

A cool new social feature which SuTree added called ”Heroes”, allows registered users to receive points for various activities they do on the site. Users can then use these points to add icons of different famous figures that are recognized for their wisdom and unique way of thinking to their personal page. The different figures are given based on the number of points a user has. Users can also give each other icons as a token of appreciation. In the near future, leading users will be invited to join SuTree’s community as moderators.

Another great feature added is called “Wrap & Send”. This new feature allows any registered user to “wrap” a few of SuTree’s videos together and send them to his friends, family, or students as a package. For example, if your parents are going on a trip to India or if you’ve got a friend who you’re trying to help quit smoking, you can create a helpful video package for them.

SuTree has also added educational games to its site. There are tons of games on the Web which help develop your thought process and cognitive skills. SuTree’s team has gathered a bunch of such games that are suited for kids and adults alike and these can be found under the category: “Brain Games”.

Apart from all this, the SuTree site has also had a nice facelift. The site’s original design was very plain and simple. In the new version of the site, you’ll see a new “spiced up” version.  SuTree has also added its own blog written by Susu the bird who you’ll see throughout the site.

It is always nice to see a startup that actually listens to its users’ feedback and suggestions. Yossi tells me: “Our vision is that SuTree will become a live and active knowledge community where every person who wants to learn something can start his/her way on the Web.”  I definitely think that with all the added features, sense of community, and thousands of videos to choose from, SuTree is a great place to start learning everything you want to know.

Congrats to my friends over at Yedda who have just announced their acquisition by AOL. I had the pleasure of working with this amazing team in its very early stages back in 2006 and I must tell you that it is seldom you meet such a strong team of players.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Yedda is a question & answer service which allows users to specify their tags of interest and only receive content based on this information. Therefore users are not bothered with questions about topics that don’t interest them. Each time that I posted a question on Yedda, I received great, relevant answers from other users. I can see why AOL would be so interested in purchasing this service. Especially given the fact that Yedda has partnered with other services such as ePals, FileRatings, and ArticlesBase, a move that has brought much traffic to the site. Yedda has also integrated its service with Twitter (see here) and Facebook.

Terms of the deal between Yedda and AOL have not been disclosed yet. Yedda says the current plan is to keep the company as an independent business operating from its current location in Tel Aviv with the current team. It will gradually integrate it into the AOL properties.

Yaniv, Avichay, Eran, Daniel, Osher, congrats to you all! You deserve it!

Jonathan Keebler has created an amazing bookmarklet that allows you to quickly upload your Flickr photo into your Facebook photo album. 

Follow these instructions: 

1) Log in to the Flickr2Facebook application

2) Save the bookmarklet to your web-browser’s bookmarks. You only have to do this once!

3) Surf to the Flickr page with the image on it you would like to upload.

4) Click the bookmarklet in your web-browser’s bookmarks.

5) Click on the Flickr2Facebook logo that appears over the image. This will popup the upload window!

6) Choose the album you would like to upload the image into.

7) Approve photo for upload

Voila! You’re done!

Google introduces its OpenSocial platform:

MySpace, Six Apart, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, Hyves, Imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce,  Tianji, Viadeo, and Xing have already confirmed that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Question now remains whether Facebook will be forced to join OpenSocial as well.

Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker said yesterday that “Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial”. When asked whether Facebook would be interested in joining forces with Google, Mrs. Barker’s reply was: ““When we have had a chance to understand the technology, then Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers.”

Even though Mike Arrington was fast to write: “Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle.” Erick Schonfeld adds in a later post on TechCrunch:

“Not so fast, Mike. The anti-Facebook coalition piling onto Google’s OpenSocial platform does not constitute checkmate for Google just quite yet. These are developer announcements. No actual consumers have changed their social networking habits because of OpenSocial. Facebook still has all the momentum with consumers (and, thus, with the developers who want to reach them). It can afford to wait and see how this whole OpenSocial thing plays out.”

In any case, Facebook cannot wait long before deciding its move. From my understanding, apps will be easier to develop for OpenSocial. With OpenSocial, for example, full applications can run on members’ profile pages, whereas on Facebook there are substantial restrictions on what developers can do on those profile pages. Therefore developers may end up preferring OpenSocial over Facebook.

Marc Andreesen, Founder of Ning, comments:

“By making this exact same kind of opportunity available to any other social network or container and every app developer and site on the web, in an open and compatible way — will prevent Facebook from having any kind of long-term proprietary developer lock-in. Developers will easily write to both Facebook and OpenSocial, and have every reason to do so — in fact, 100+ million reasons to do so.”

Since it is known that Facebook is preparing to take on Google with its own social ad network soon, if Facebook joins OpenSocial, and makes it simple for its developers to port their applications elsewhere and power those applications with Facebook ads, then it could really reign victorious.

It will be interesting to see what Facebook’s move will be. What do you think? Will Facebook be forced to join OpenSocial? And should it join OpenSocial?

I liked Jerome’s comment on TechCrunch: “The entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.” Let the game begin!