Apps

Custom tabs, Ghosts of Mistwood, Jewel Kingdom, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

by M. Dorn on July 21, 2012 · 0 comments

Topping our list of emerging applications by monthly active users this week was Custom Tab | Arrow #3, a page tab application builder from Woobox. The rest of our list was made up mostly of games, though sports social reader GiveMeFootball and social networking app Path

We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. This week’s top apps grew from between 120,000 and 390,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain %
1.	Custom Tab \| Arrow #3	900,000	+390,000	+ 76%
2.	Disney’s Ghosts of Mistwood	920,000	+370,000	+ 84%
3.	Jewel Kingdom	980,000	+370,000	+ 61%
4.	Subway Surfers	900,000	+300,000	+ 50%
5.	TDP4 Team Battle	410,000	+200,000	+ 95%
6.	Panda Jam	860,000	+180,000	+ 30%
7.	www-bing-int1.com	400,000	+170,000	+ 74%
8.	Tab Builder: Like	590,000	+170,000	+ 40%
9.	The Fan Machine	670,000	+170,000	+ 34%
10.	Hollywood Slots	510,000	+150,000	+ 42%
11.	Static HTML… [Tenth Tab]	560,000	+150,000	+ 37%
12.	Ruby Blast	650,000	+150,000	+ 35%
13.	Botkin’s Hidden Cove	830,000	+150,000	+ 22%
14.	GiveMeFootball	890,000	+150,000	+ 20%
15.	Lost Legacies	220,000	+140,000	+ 175%
16.	Crazy Penguin Wars	610,000	+140,000	+ 30%
17.	Path	680,000	+140,000	+ 26%
18.	Custom Tab \| Arrow #2	950,000	+140,000	+ 17%
19.	Winner Super Slots	410,000	+130,000	+ 46%
20.	WhoSay	280,000	+120,000	+ 87%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday.

Source: Inside Facebook

Capturing Growth: Photo Apps and Open Graph

by M. Dorn on July 18, 2012 · 0 comments

People upload an average of more than 300 million images to Facebook every day, making photos a core part of the Facebook experience. Developers tap into this enthusiasm by creating a variety of apps that make sharing photos more fun and that help people to easily enhance images. They are effectively incorporating Open Graph into apps and tapping into Facebook’s key social points — timeline, news feed, and ticker — to increase referrals, signups and engagement.

The Bigger Picture

PicCollage: A fun app on iOS and Android for creating social photo collages, PicCollage’s Open Graph implementation increased its mobile referrals three fold, its click-through rate by 20% and its weekly active users by 40%. PicCollage has grown through the use of multiple actions, email notifications, the built-in Like action, and prominently featuring Login with Facebook (mobile and web) when the app launches.

Cinemagram: This app brings photos to life through GIF animation and makes it easy to add them to timeline. Cinemagram — which utilizes Login with Facebook, Facebook’s Comments Box and Like button plugins, and enables Open Graph stories with User Generated Action Photos. The integrations have boosted the number of people logged in to Cinegram through Facebook by a fourth to 15% of overall users. People logged into Cinemagram through Facebook are engaged for twice as long as people who aren’t, and they generate 60% to 70% of Cinemagram’s total referrals.

Hipstamatic: “The little plastic camera with the golden shutter” launched an Open Graph implementation at the start of July. Since then, mobile referrals have doubled and daily active users are up 50%. One of the top grossing iOS photo apps, Hipstamatic publishes activity via Open Graph, provides clear user controls for sharing, and leverages timeline so its community can authentically represent their Hipstamatic usage (lenses, films, and gear).

Instagram: Launched User Generated Action Photos in April and mobile based referrals have grown 4x since then. On both iOS and Android, Instagram also launched built-in Like action at the end of June and now one-third of all of its Open Graph actions are Likes, boosting mobile referral traffic 10%.

But these developers aren’t alone, and they’re not just based in the US. PicsArt Photo Studio is based in Armenia and is the #1 free Android photo app, while FxCamera, also available on Android and currently with more than 10 million installs, is based in Japan. Popset and Gifboom also have notable Open Graph implementations (See this Facebook Apps post on Top Free Photo Apps).

Best Practices

Login with Facebook: This is the first essential step for enabling developers to immediately create a social experience and for leveraging Facebook’s key distribution channels. Featuring this option when the mobile app launches helps establish this connection right away. Find more information here.

PicCollage utilizes Login with Facebook when its app launches.

Provide Simple Controls: Enabling an easy publishing experience is important for both developers and people using their apps. People get more value from an app the more they understand it so developers with photo apps that publish by default should provide easy opt-out controls. Find more information here.

Once a person has logged in with their Facebook account, PicCollage enables Facebook sharing with an easy-to-use control.

Hipstamatic prominently promotes timeline functionality and provides easy access for adjusting personal settings.

Hipstamatic uses custom Open Graph actions and objects to allow people to showcase the unique lenses and cameras they use.

Built-In Like: This is the easiest way for a developer to enable sharing from an app. The Open Graph built-in Like action allows developers to build their own Like buttons for mobile or web apps and drive distribution across Facebook. Find more information here.

Instagram’s integration of the Like API drives powerful distribution through Facebook. When a person’s Facebook friends like a photo within Instagram, he or she will see a notification on Facebook.

Open Graph Photos API: This feature enables people to upload, interact with and experience photos through an app the same way they do with any other photo on Facebook. Find more information here.

Using Open Graph, PicCollage’s images get the same design treatment that users expect to see photos on Facebook.

We’ve always been excited about the role of photos on Facebook and we look forward to innovating further on the tools that Facebook developers have available to them so that they can keep creating great apps.

Source: Facebook Developer Blog

New mobile ‘action links’ allow users to take specific actions in other apps without leaving Facebook

by M. Dorn on July 16, 2012 · 0 comments

Facebook appears to be testing its “action links” feature on mobile, making it easy for users to engage with third-party apps without leaving Facebook.

For example, when a user sees a friend’s story about checking into a location on Foursquare, they have a prominent option to “save this place.” If the user is logged into Foursquare, they can click the button to add the location to their Foursquare “to-do list” without ever leaving the Facebook mobile app. That action also generates a story on the user’s own Timeline.

Any developer can create custom action links to increase the viral potential of each story about their app that appears in News Feed. These sort of integrations promote discovery and re-engagement for mobile and web apps connected with the social network. If a user has not already added an app, they can be directed to add the app when they click on an action link.

Developers can designate an action link for any action they define in their app. Similar to the Foursquare example, Spotify could add a “add to playlist” action link on stories about a song or artist. Pinterest could allow users to repin items directly from the Facebook feed. Words With Friends might want to include a “play with this friend” or “challenge” link in its stories. This would allow users to easily begin a new game with the friend whose activity they saw in their feed.

[Update 7/16/12 12:30 p.m. PT - Spotify has already integrated action links to allow users to star songs as a favorite via the Facebook mobile site, Adweek's Tim Peterson found.]

Facebook introduced action links to the desktop News Feed in May. Before then, users could Like or comment on app activity or click to visit an app, but there weren’t app-specific calls to action that functioned the way action links now do. Facebook’s documentation on the feature still says this is unavailable on mobile, but we saw the Foursquare action link live on Sunday night. Facebook has not yet offered us details on whether this is available to everyone or in limited beta for now.

Here is how the Foursquare example works:

User sees action link in Facebook News Feed when a friend checks in on Foursquare.

User clicks “save this place” and location is saved in Foursquare without the user having to leave the Facebook app.

Story is pushed to a user’s “recent activity” section of Timeline.

Next time user visits the Foursquare app, the saved location will be included on the user’s to-do list.

Source: Inside Facebook

CSR Racing, Ghosts of Mistwood, The Ville, GifBoom and more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps

by M. Dorn on July 16, 2012 · 0 comments

Mobile app CSR Racing led our list of emerging applications by monthly active users, nearly doubling its total MAU this week.

We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. This week’s top apps grew between 100,000 and 460,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain %
1.	CSR Racing	940,000	+460,000	+ 96%
2.	Disney’s Ghosts of Mistwood	500,000	+290,000	+ 138%
3.	The Ville	490,000	+278,233	+ 131%
4.	GifBoom	660,000	+190,000	+ 40%
5.	The Sims FreePlay	960,000	+180,000	+ 23%
6.	Via.Me	490,000	+170,000	+ 53%
7.	AllAppforplay	170,000	+163,496	+ 2,514%
8.	Crazy Penguin Wars	470,000	+160,000	+ 52%
9.	GiveMeFootball	740,000	+160,000	+ 28%
10.	Custom Tab \| Arrow #2	810,000	+160,000	+ 25%
11.	Woobox Custom Tab \| Arrow #4	620,000	+150,000	+ 38%
12.	Static HTML… [Tenth Tab]	410,000	+140,000	+ 52%
13.	Tab Builder: Like	420,000	+140,000	+ 50%
14.	Ruby Blast	480,000	+130,000	+ 45%
15.	AppWebdDee.Com	600,000	+130,000	+ 28%
16.	Get Dating	220,000	+120,000	+ 120%
17.	www-bing-int1.com	230,000	+110,000	+ 92%
18.	UFC.TV App	230,000	+110,000	+ 92%
19.	Panda Jam	660,000	+110,000	+ 20%
20.	Polls Survey tab for Pages with TradableBits	160,000	+100,000	+ 167%

No. 2 was Disney’s Ghosts of Mistwood, which reached 500,000 MAU this week. Zynga’s The Ville is just short of the milestone, coming in at No. 3. Zynga’s Ruby Blast came in at No. 14.

No. 4 was GifBoom, an app for iPhone and Android allows users to create animated gifs and share them on the social network. No. 6 Via.Me is another mobile app, this one allows users to share both photos and videos.

No. 8 Crazy Penguin Wars is a multiplayer shooter game for the Facebook canvas. No. 9 GiveMeFootball is a social reader app for Football news. No. 18 UFC.TV App is a website integration for the UFC, which uses Facebook login but not Open Graph, as it doesn’t appear to share user activity to Timeline.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Source: Inside Facebook

TripAdvisor, Bubble Safari, SongPop, SimCity Social, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

by M. Dorn on July 10, 2012 · 0 comments

TripAdvisor again takes the No. 1 spot on our list of top growing Facebook apps by monthly active users this week.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 540,000 and 2.1 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain %
1.	TripAdvisor™	35,300,000	+2,100,000	+ 6%
2.	Bubble Safari	30,000,000	+1,900,000	+ 7%
3.	SongPop	7,200,000	+1,800,000	+ 33%
4.	SimCity Social	1,900,000	+1,330,000	+ 233%
5.	Terra	13,400,000	+1,100,000	+ 9%
6.	Static HTML: iframe tabs	22,400,000	+1,100,000	+ 5%
7.	Pedido de Amigos	5,000,000	+1,100,000	+ 28%
8.	Instagram	22,200,000	+1,000,000	+ 5%
9.	Dragon City	3,500,000	+800,000	+ 30%
10.	Static HTML… [Fourth Tab]	3,700,000	+800,000	+ 28%
11.	Glassdoor	4,500,000	+800,000	+ 22%
12.	Zoosk	10,300,000	+800,000	+ 8%
13.	Static HTML… [Third Tab]	4,800,000	+700,000	+ 17%
14.	Static HTML… [Second Tab]	8,100,000	+700,000	+ 9%
15.	TA Hare/Carrot™	760,000	+680,000	+ 850%
16.	Yu-Gi-Oh! BAM	1,400,000	+660,000	+ 89%
17.	Static HTML… [Eighth Tab]	1,100,000	+610,000	+ 124%
18.	Static HTML… [Fifth Tab]	1,900,000	+600,000	+ 46%
19.	Samsung Mobile	18,200,000	+600,000	+ 3%
20.	My Photos+	1,100,000	+540,000	+ 96%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Source: Inside Facebook