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facebook economy 2

Tim O'Reilly Research team just published a book about facebook application.

Facebook Long Tail
Facebook Long Tail
According to O'Reilly's blog, they found that the long tail of the popularity of those apps shows that most of the app actually can only attract few users. Tim's theory is the facebook still is very young. It need time to see the distribution of the curve change or not.

The truth for me is: if facebook has no such big inventory of interesting app, i will never use facebook. Marc Anderson's comparison of 1994 Geocities and facebook list of function (and Ning of cause) give us a clear pictures about the importance of the app. Without those app or functionality, facebook or Ning will be like Geocities, only personal homepage and photo uploading.

Let's back to the economy: who makes money? First is the platform itself, like Amazon.com, Salesforce.com, second life... Secondly, the most popular app on the platform. But how about the app on the tail? Check the curve again. Its only top 50 of facebook app and decline so fast. Remember they have more than 5000 app? The tail is really very very looooong!

Post a comment Tags: app, facebook, long tail, developer