Valleywag
Facebook applications were supposed to provide advertisers with compelling new ways to mine for customers on the Web, but the results have not panned out. Sony attempted to capitalize on the Facebook buzz and the holiday season with a branded snowglobe application. Just the sort of useless eye candy popular on the social network, but the application garnered less than 500 installations and only 35 active users. Why?
One explanation is that it was simply a bad application, transparently created by advertisers rather than developers well-versed in the network's mores; with no way to invite friends in on the fun, Sony's trinkets didn't take advantage of Facebook's built-in marketing mechanisms. Building a Facebook application for the mere sake of having one is probably not the advertiser's goal, but for the time being, ad agencies don't seem to be able to come up with much more than these hamhanded attempts. Desperate to seem hip, advertisers will likely keep shelling out for more useless apps — until they start looking at the numbers, and grow some globes of their own.
Comments
On the home screen for my professional Facebook profile, I was invited to "play" in Vera Wang's "princess land." I can't even begin to imagine what keywords triggered *that* ad, but clearly they need to work on it.
I was asked to join a 35+ dating website. I am 31 yrs old. I guess I should be expecting marketing from Centrum, and The Villages soon.
very few big corp FB apps have been successful getting traction (exception: TripAdvisor's Cities I've visited, altho since TA was also internet startup themseleves b4 getting acquired by Expedia -> IAC, hard to really call them a 'big corp'.
given the rampant success of many smaller developers with independent FB apps, seems like most big co's should be buying / licensing / sponsoring smaller shop efforts, rather than trying to build themselves. they could probably get some decent apps for low 5 figures, rather than wasting their own time/resources.
several such companies now starting to approach students in our Stanford FB class, also other FB developers i know. hopefully others wise up... would help to develop the market faster. lots of app users out there, but not as much ad dollars as possible in future (yet).
I don't disagree with Dave McClure, but I wrote my own opinion on our site.
videoegg.com/blog
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