Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

A Look at Facebook Apps

I’m on Facebook much like many of my peers and former colleagues.  It offers all the benefits of a social network - the ability to post pictures, comment on each other’s profiles, and see who knows who.  It attracts plenty of traffic due to the interactive nature of the content.  As a marketer, I am instantly interested in it due to its captive audience, high level of interaction, frequency of user visits, and ability to potentially target specific segments. 

One element I don’t truly understand is if Facebook Applications or Widgets really hold any value for marketers.  For Fortune 500 companies, I see some obvious benefits including branding, increased touch points, and creating deeper interaction with consumers.  However, the challenge is creating applications that fit with your brand and are interesting enough for people to want to add the application.  A good example of this is TripAdvisor’s “Cities I’ve Visited” Application.  It fits well with the branding of TripAdvisor.com (that being offering travel advice, reviews, and forums) and it is interesting enough that people would add the application (always interesting to see where people have traveled to).  However the application has a bit under 54,000 daily active users as of today, which is only 1% of the Facebook population.

Most popular applications are not done by Fortune 500 companies but rather by small start-ups or individuals.  Some popular ones include SuperWall, Flixster, Slide, Scrabulous to name a few.  I can see a couple of potential revenue streams that many are utilizing today - online advertising (banner and text ads) and affiliate referral commissions.  I’ve also seen merchandise being sold based off application characters like (Fluff)Friends and can see the potential for using an application as a lead generation tool to other games/programs/services a developer might sell outside of Facebook. 

In my opinion, the problem with these applications are the stickiness and loyalty of its user base.  I feel that popular applications one month quickly fizzle out to the next application the next month.  It’s almost like what’s the current flavor of the month?  Amongst my friends alone, I’ve seen mass interest jump from Scrabulous to (Fluff )Friends to Who Has The Biggest Brain? over the past 2-3 months alone.  Looking at applications from the business side, I question how much money should be invested in creating these applications.  There’s definitely alot of buzz surrounding applications and widgets but I’m not totally convinced that the buzz is actionable.

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Give Me What I Want, When I Want It

I spent part of the past couple of days trying to find this album - Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Live at Radio City Music Hall.  You would think that a release from a major artist would be easier to find.  However it took 4 stores (1 online and 3 brick and mortar) to get it done.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been seeking out new music to play on my commute to work.  On Tuesday, I knew the new Dave album was coming out so I made a visit to Target during lunch.  It was priced at $11.99 but was totally sold out.  Instead of driving to another store, I decided to wait until later that night to just purchase the album on iTunes.

When I got home and checked out the iTunes store I was annoyed to see the album selling for $12.99.  For the same music and less product and packaging, it costs more?  Of course out of principle I didn’t buy it.

Today, during lunch I visited Wal-Mart and low-and-behold it was not in stock there either.  It wasn’t until I visited Best Buy next store was I finally able to purchase the album (btw- for $11.99).

Selling is a simple concept - provide a timely solution to a customer’s need that is greater than or equal to his/her willingness to pay.  In the cases of Target and Wal-Mart, they missed the mark on being timely.  They simple didn’t provide the product when I wanted it.  iTunes missed the mark in that it was charging a price that was more than I was willing to pay.  I simply didn’t feel the product they were offering justified the price.  Best Buy won out because they gave me what I wanted, when I wanted it, and a price that I felt was fair.  Simple concept, not always done correctly.

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