Facebook Apps: Invisible Network Effects
Facebook is now a network effects company, the same way Google is an algorithm company.
And it’s going to pay off bigger than anyone seems to expect in mobile.
But before I go into that: I know what you’re thinking. The FB mobile app, on iOS and Android, is pretty bad. It’s slow, frustrating, and manages to be both cluttered and short on functionality.
But ignore the flagship FB mobile app. It’s a mess for a reason: it’s an attempt to put everything on Facebook into one place. It’s as bad on iOS as iTunes is on OSX.
Look instead at Messenger and Camera. These fit into a mobile design paradigm that, frankly, Facebook was never designed for. They are single purpose apps, and unlike many mobile apps, they are instantly useful.
This is the secret weapon Facebook has on mobile. Developing a network on anything sucks. Letting one app access your data from another app feels sketchy.
Facebook, on the other hand, has spent the better part of a decade letting you plug your every social connection into it. And, despite complaints, they have a fairly robust privacy management system.
You’re already using Facebook (probably), they just need to remind you why. And being able to instantly populate your phone’s mobile apps with a deep and vetted network you have already approved? That’s a decent why.
Camera seems great, despite being an instagram also-ran. Because it was instantly relevant, with one click. Because it showed me Facebook photos I wouldn’t have seen in the news feed, on desktop OR mobile.
Messenger is much the same. People I couldn’t easily reach on my phone before are now easy to text. One step. No setup.
Beyond this multi app approach, the biggest clue that these apps are a big part of FB’s way forward is the naming.
Facebook isn’t focusing on social networking apps. They’re aiming to replace core functions of your most intimate device, by being less work.
With the end result of making more and more interactions part of their social graph.
The Appropriate Tool
I’m visiting my sister and her family this weekend, and I’m just at the outset of a personal project. I assumed that lugging my MacBook Air and iPhone along would keep me in working order for the trip.
But I find myself missing my aging, generation 1 iPad.
The stage this project is at, I need to try a bunch of things. Mock up pages, try text styles, play. And for whatever reason, my laptop doesn’t feel like the correct tool for that. So it’s stayed in my bag more or less since I’ve gotten here.
I’ve been scribbling in Evernote since the drive here began, and adding to my notes and ideas. But I haven’t pulled out a notebook, because I fear that leaving too much of this project on paper will stall me on this page. I need to play with content.
The bigger issue though, is context. In a family social setting, I can play with my phone or tablet without getting a second look. A laptop or notebook, however, creates an assumption that you want to be left alone.
There are jobs, in passive creation, where the iPad has become my ideal device. And this is the power of creating new categories: you find undiscovered use cases.
The short version is, there’s not always a justification until a reason for one is created. If you create a compelling tool, people will create a use for it.
A good enough product can create market fit.
Words Destroyed by My Generation
- Awesome (did not used to mean ‘cool’)
- Genius (did not used to mean ‘smart’)
- Brilliant (did not used to mean ‘bright’)
- Authentic (did not used to mean ‘cool without seeming to have applied effort’)
- Revolutionary (did not used to mean ‘new’)
- Innovative (did not used to mean ‘new’, either)
- Entrepreneur (did not used to mean ‘self-employed’)
- Visionary (did not used to mean ‘has an idea’)
But seriously: when was the last time you saw someone use one of these words in a way that made you think it was justified?
This is the worst product composite shot I’ve seen in years.
Why we hate paying for content online.
[This is an extremely simplified version of a much larger point]
Publishing used to be hard. Publishing is now very easy.
Distribution used to be hard. Distribution is now very easy.
When Publishing was hard, it indicated Authority. Now Authority is less clearly defined.
When Distribution was hard, it indicated Importance. Now Importance is less clearly defined.
People can be easily convinced to pay for that which is Authoritative and Important. It is much harder to convince people to pay for specific goods on a flat landscape, where Authority and Importance is far less obvious, and far more relative.
You’ll note that I’m not mentioning piracy, or copyright, here. Because piracy has always existed, and should be folded under the same banner as breakage, or any other inevitable reality of selling things.
The problem isn’t a lack of morality. It’s a lack of clear signifiers that say ‘HERE is the thing you should want to pay for’, mixed with a nearly infinite sea of choices.
I like Gumroad. It solves an actual problem, has a revenue model, and has multiple use cases.
The thing I find most interesting about it is that you could sell pretty much anything digital on this platform in nearly no time. This doesn’t just change the actual sales process, it changes the expectations of what you can sell.
For instance, there are a TON of bloggers and writers who, if they were selling a PDF book or presentation, functionally a longform blog post, I would shell out $5. There’s a larger group of people who could charge me $0.99 very easily, for video or images or behind the scenes content.
If Gumroad works, it could conceivably facilitate a fourth model of internet sustainability [after Ad Support, Freemium, and Patronage (including Crowdfunding and Branded Support)].
Definitely keeping an eye on this, and don’t be surprised if I start trying to sell thinking in digital formats.
Best Thing On The Internet Today.
I love ze frank’s A Show. I loved The Show, too, but I specifically like the current presentation of interactive elements around each youtube video, with links, and missions, sitting comfortably to the side of the action.
It makes me happy that in the episode, ze says ‘It’s like in that whitman poem’, and clearly, without direction, I see that the link to the side will let me read the poem in question.
It’s minimal as hell, but it’s amazing UX.
Why You Get Tired of Twitter
Every new thing has a curve. In my experience it goes something like this.
• New (A new social object or platform has been discovered.)
• First Connections (You find someone to share this new discovery with. Your shared interest is a foundation for a relationship.)
• Tight Community (Your initial connections intensify, and grow in number.)
• Scaling Community (The overall community grows, outside of your personal social group.)
• Dissonance (The overall community is less recognizable. You no longer feel a sense of understanding or ownership.)
• Discontent (The lack of connection to the growing community leads you to feel that it has changed. Your initial social connections no longer feel related to this platform.)
This has happened three or four times in my life. Each time, the early stages have been hugely beneficial or transformative, and the tail ends have been distracting and more than a little hard to move through.
Interestingly, when new platforms feel less valuable to me as an early adopter, the monetary value they have increases exponentially. Mass appeal, as a necessity, alienates the initial core. However, I’ve also seen that feeling of alienation come at a time when an entire social network or platform collapses as it attempts to scale.
The research comes from Panos Ipeirotis, an Associate Professor and George A. Kellner Faculty Fellow at the Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at Leonard N. Stern School of Business of New York University. He started looking at visibility metrics for online ads over a year ago and has since been analyzing over 1.5 billion ad impressions a day. His high level findings:
38% of ads are never in view to a user
50% of ads are in view for less than 0.5 seconds
56% of ads are in view for less than 5 seconds
Nobody Even Sees 50% Of Your Media Buy | mThink.com
I’ve suspected that most ad metrics are iffy at best. I didn’t expect that they were THIS iffy.
Trying to Optimize.
Last night, I became fascinated by trying to figure out which apps I use the most, and which home screen apps are actually just wasting space. So, I’m experimenting: moving some likely lower utility apps off the home screen, and seeing what my daily use is actually like.
(Apps removed: Safari, Foursquare, TeuxDeux, and Facebook)
Interestingly, I only starting realizing I didn’t often use Foursquare and Facebook when I turned off notifications. FB was essentially spam, given the low barrier to event invites, and Foursquare notifications stopped providing even useful information when I realized I’d rather use it as a discovery tool when traveling. Safari is functionally accessed 90+% of the time via other apps, or spotlight search, and I found my mobile to do list was only accessed during certain meetings, in which I am more and more relying on Evernote.
I’ll post an update later on with any realizations from this process.
EDIT 1: After only a short time, I realized that I head to my second screen of apps for the App Store icon more than nearly anything else, given it manages updates, and I tend to be obsessed with new technology releases.
