Facebook Service: Appaholic
13/07/07 17:51 Filed in: Reviews
The Pitch:
Appaholicdoes not make it
any secret that it wants to be
the Alexa
of the
Facebook application community. And
while it won't win any artistic
awards, it certainly delivers what it
says. Jesse Farmer developed this
site, which enables visitors to
compare user bases among Facebook
applications. He keeps the 20
applications with the most users on
its front page and allows for a quick
comparison of up to three applications
by the number of users, percentage
change and number of users per hour.
Farmer has also recently added a
feature called the "Viral Dashboard."
The dashboard puts every application
in the Facebook directory into a
sortable table, along with a link to
the application's primary page. I see
that "What's your stripper
name?" finally got knocked
out of the top spot after several days
of amazing growth by none other
than Harry Potter Magic
Spells. I doubt I am alone
in spending more time than a human
should browsing the pages every day to
see who is getting contagious and who
is not,. Then again, I do write a blog
about contagious applications.
The Good:
Obviously the information is the sweet part of the site. Farmer is pretty modest about what he has done, but his service has quickly become essential for the FB application community. The information itself is available to anyone, but Farmer is the only one who has organized it and put it into an extremely easy-to-use format. While it might be fun to compare the top 20 applications, the real use is in comparing similar applications and monitoring the daily movers and shakers. Before Appaholic, users were limited to Facebook's "most popular," "newest" and "most users" categories. That service is marginally useful. Now there are real numbers to see and analyze — and for many development teams — to obsess over.
Not as Good:
The charts are straight out of the Microsoft design school. While that is a little annoying, it’s really a reminder that good information and functionality really are more important than prettiness. Given a choice between beautiful charts with limited information and boring charts with indispensable information, it’s a no-brainer. Perhaps Farmer will one day team up with a designer and we will be able to have our cake and eat it too.
Monetization Possibilities:
Appaholic is your gateway to the wild world of Facebook applications. See how your app is growing or compare it to its competitors. What times of day is your application doing well? What were the effects of your marketing campaign? What sort of uptake can you expect if you create a Facebook application? Appaholic will help you answer all these questions.
Appaholicdoes not make it
any secret that it wants to be
the Alexa
of the
Facebook application community. And
while it won't win any artistic
awards, it certainly delivers what it
says. Jesse Farmer developed this
site, which enables visitors to
compare user bases among Facebook
applications. He keeps the 20
applications with the most users on
its front page and allows for a quick
comparison of up to three applications
by the number of users, percentage
change and number of users per hour.
Farmer has also recently added a
feature called the "Viral Dashboard."
The dashboard puts every application
in the Facebook directory into a
sortable table, along with a link to
the application's primary page. I see
that "What's your stripper
name?" finally got knocked
out of the top spot after several days
of amazing growth by none other
than Harry Potter Magic
Spells. I doubt I am alone
in spending more time than a human
should browsing the pages every day to
see who is getting contagious and who
is not,. Then again, I do write a blog
about contagious applications.
The Good:
Obviously the information is the sweet part of the site. Farmer is pretty modest about what he has done, but his service has quickly become essential for the FB application community. The information itself is available to anyone, but Farmer is the only one who has organized it and put it into an extremely easy-to-use format. While it might be fun to compare the top 20 applications, the real use is in comparing similar applications and monitoring the daily movers and shakers. Before Appaholic, users were limited to Facebook's "most popular," "newest" and "most users" categories. That service is marginally useful. Now there are real numbers to see and analyze — and for many development teams — to obsess over.
Not as Good:
The charts are straight out of the Microsoft design school. While that is a little annoying, it’s really a reminder that good information and functionality really are more important than prettiness. Given a choice between beautiful charts with limited information and boring charts with indispensable information, it’s a no-brainer. Perhaps Farmer will one day team up with a designer and we will be able to have our cake and eat it too.
Monetization Possibilities:
- Update
- Farmer has posted directions at Inside Facebook detailing how to manipulate Appaholic's data within Excel to forecast growth. Warning: It is highly addictive.