By Stephanie Shore and Myung Jin Lee
Facebook used to be fairly simple. An interested friend could scroll past the basic information in a user profile and on the right was the “wall” – an area for comments and messages. On the left, there were friends, photos and groups. But since Facebook opened its application programming interface everything has changed.
From “Bumper Sticker” to “Are You Normal?” more than 14,500 Facebook applications have conquered the profiles of countless users, and the number keeps increasing. The results range from annoying to entertaining, but for third-party developers, these applications serve a different purpose: profit.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the site as a Harvard student in 2004, opened Facebook to third-party developers in May 2007. Since then, applications, which are usually free, have managed to drive in revenue for the companies that service them. The most successful companies are earning profit from advertisement revenue, according to a recent story on Forbes.com.
SNAP Interactive, for example, services the social networking applications “Are You Interested?” and “Meet New People.” According to a press release from the company, the applications’ successes have buoyed the company’s revenue to a 300 percent increase from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.
“SNAP’s fourth quarter results indicate that our shift in focus to building online dating applications and our monetization plans are working,” said the company’s CEO, Clifford Lerner, in the statement.
While the popularity of Facebook applications is evident by the growing numbers of users, some students are unhappy with their prevalence.
“They are annoying, not entertaining. … I don’t see any real value in it,” said Greta Ailken, a sophomore civil and environmental engineering major. “I like to stick to the basics such as photos, wall posts, events and messages.”
Many applications simply exist for a niche market, like pirate or dragon enthusiasts. Others help track sports teams or political beliefs. “Pro Football Picks” promises its users can “Follow your favorite team, see who your friends’ favorite teams are, talk about the NFL with your friends and other football fans and play Pro Football Picks.”
“I use some of them: movies, sports, politics, etc.,” said Tim Loranger, a sophomore architecture major. “Some of them are stupid, such as ‘rate me.'”
In a saturated market, concepts are bound to step over the line. “Scrabulous,” launched in July 2007, is a Facebook version of Scrabble. As of January 2008, the game had 520,835 daily active users. Unfortunately, the makers of “Scrabulous” forgot to consult Hasbro, the company that holds the Scrabble trademark in the United States and Canada.
Hasbro asked Facebook to remove the game in mid-January, but no action had been taken as of press time. As a result, another application, “Save Scrabulous,” was created to organize petitions to Hasbro and Mattel and to spread the word. Several “Save Scrabulous” groups have been created, and one has more than 50,000 members.
The success of applications is often driven by users inviting their friends to join. As a result, Facebook users may find their inboxes full of requests: “Would you like to take a movie quiz?” or “Your friend wants you to join the zombie war!” Students now face spam from unlikely marketers – their friends.
“I use all of [the applications],” said Nay Pwint, a freshman anthropology major. “Some of my friends said that they had difficulty finding my wall when they want to write on it because there are lots of applications. But I like it.”
It’s clear that thousands of Facebook users are taking advantage of applications. What they may not know is how much their enjoyment is earning for advertisers.
