Analyst asks: Facebook on the down and out thanks to applications?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 15:58

Business IT - Networking

The rise and rise of the 'crap app' - that is, the quality-free Facebook application -  looks like causing major problems for the venerable social networking site. At least one analyst credits this as causing a stack of key Facebook stats to go into a serious slump since January. What's going on?

Developers, developers, developers! It's a line we've heard before, and a line that every so-called web platform wishes they could monkey dance to as well as Steve Ballmer from Microsoft.

But the push for developers to create applications for Facebook, all in search of the 'next big thing' and 'sure money spinner, seems to be causing a major decline at Facebook, if Ovum analyst David Mitchell is right with his latest thoughts.

He's the senior vice president of IT research at consulting firm Ovum, and while he acknowledges the importance of a strong developer community to any platform, the flood of banal shovelware apps is of major concern.

The decline at Facebook is substantial: he cites figures showing that between January and April 2008, the number of posts fell by 51 percent, signups by 29 percent, and highly active users - surely the lifeblood of any social network - by 47 percent.

"The proportion of totally banal applications seems to be on the increase and there are fewer and fewer applications that my network, as an example, is finding to be sticky," he says.

With a very small number of exceptions, "most applications are installed for a day or so but are quickly removed as it becomes evident that they are only concerned with self-propagation and the collection of data on your social graph."

That's hardly a recipe for success or for delivering something useful to the consumer, is it? But what should the company do? Mitchell's suggestion is on page 2.