A Two-Minute History
Invitations, Notifications,
& Feeds on Facebook
Graphing Social Patterns
October 9, 2007
Justin Smith
InsideFacebook.com justin@insidefacebook.com
Watercooler, Inc. justin@watercooler-inc.com

Since May 25
 366 million apps in first
20 weeks (Adonomics)
 >1 billion in first year?
 14 million unique app
users in August (Compete)
 88 million app visits
 4:30 per visit

Invitations
 Initial bonanza
 Now volume limited
 Starting to target
 No built-in stats

Invitations

Feeds
 News and Mini Feeds
introduced Sept 2006
 Broadcasts your activity
 Privacy concerns

Feeds
You can optimize
 Story
 Elements
 Calls to action

News Feed
Selection algorithm
 Not published
 Depends on individual
 No built-in stats
> Only friends also with the
app see your feed items

Notifications
 Friends of logged-in
user or anyone with app
 Can still email (?)
 Can get shut down
 Not very transparent
 Short view vs. long view

Questions/Issues
 Design framework
 How/when/why
 Testing / optimization
 Targeting
 Analytics
 Adapting to Platform changes
 Often announced, sometimes documented
 Spam

Viral Strategy Panel
 Blake Commagere, Mogad (Causes, Vampires, Zombies)
 Jia Shen, RockYou
 Jason Ackerman, TeachThePeople
 Tim O’Shaughnessy, HungryMachine