Design Learnings From Viral Applications Presentation

Slide 1: Design Learnings from Viral Applications April 2008

Slide 2: Who is RockYou? Over 50 Applications and Widgets 2

Slide 3: The RockYou Mission “To engage the world through social applications” 3

Slide 4: Stats!  Invented the Space  Double Digit penetration across leading social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo..)  105 Million Uniques  1.5 Billion Pageviews  150+Million Widget views a day 4

Slide 5: Agenda  The Social Space  Product Design  Development Phasing  Tuning in Depth  Q&A 5

Slide 6: The Opportunity

Slide 7: Market for Social Apps is Exploding 2005 2008 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 (U.K.) 8 9 9 Wikipedia.org 10 10 Alexa Global Traffic Rankings 7

Slide 8: Social Applications Increase Site Traffic Over 150% 66MM RockYou Integration Growth! 26MM Pre-f8 Active Users Active Users Today  Over 18,000 applications  95% have an application  60%+ have a RockYou app 8

Slide 9: Huge Growth Potential 50 Registered Users (MM) 40 Facebook platform 30 launch 20 10 (2) 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 (1) Months Source: eBay Investor Presentation, RockYou (2) eBay starts Q2 98, PayPal starts Q1’00, Yahoo! starts Q1’95, AOL starts Q1’92, Facebook starts Q4’04, and RockYou Starts Q4’05 (3) Facebook data represents active users, which was disclosed on 12/05 and 12/06. Undisclosed active user data is extrapolated by applying an average active user penetration to global Unique Visitors (per comScore Media Metrix) 9

Slide 10: How did we grow so fast? Rise of open platforms + laser-like focus on metrics and viral channels Flash Widget Era - Profile - Profile - Profile - Bulletin - Requests - Messages - Notifications - Notifications - Email - Email - News Feed - Activity stream - Profile action - Home surface 10

Slide 11: Product Design

Slide 12: RockYou approach to product design  Apply advertising principles to user-facing web design  Build fast and launch asap  Iterate on original design  Let data guide product decisions 12

Slide 13: Apply advertising principles to user-facing web design  Its all about Conversion Rate  Each touch point equivalent to an ad pageview – Profile Views – Canvas Pages – Invites – Feeds  Grow by increasing number of touch points and maximizing conversion on each touch point  Have a plan to maximize use of every channel  Must consider implications for long-term user experience – Don’t abuse the channels 13

Slide 14: Build fast and launch asap  Design simple concepts  Focus on virality and growth  Accept the fact that channels >> features – Channels bring in new users and keep them coming back – Only the top 0.1% of features can accomplish this alone  Validate concepts quickly – User tests – Just launch it 14

Slide 15: Iterate Rapidly  Viral channels should drive product concept and feature development – Not the other way around!  Tune the viral loop  A/B Test  Release Often 15

Slide 16: Let data guide product decisions  Don’t Be Emotional – Numbers don’t lie  There are no user experts – 60% + female – 15-25  Do user studies when you don’t have web metrics  Viral channels should drive product concept and feature development – Not the other way around!  Have a plan to maximize use of every channel 16

Slide 17: Development Process

Slide 18: Development Process 1.Marketing / Validation 2.Growth 3.Engagement 18

Slide 19: Application Types  Channel – Superwall, HugMe  Content – Flixster, iLike, Watercooler  Dating – Likeness, Compare People  Games – Zombies, FluffFriends, SpeedRacer, Friends for Sale  Gifts – Grow-a-gift, Free Gifts, Boozemail  Self Expression – Cities I’ve Visitied, Bumper Sticker 19

Slide 20: Marketing / Validation Audience Channels Messaging 20

Slide 21: Audience Skew heavily to teen and young adult women—brand influencers 21

Slide 22: Audience  What’s the total size of market  What percentage penetration is goal – Whats possible virality of market? – Average number of friends – Myspace vs Ning vs iGoogle 22

Slide 23: Messaging  Develop your concept around high-converting calls to action – Simplicity – Universal – Social persuasion – Novelty (art) 23

Slide 24: Channels  Focus on 1 to 1 channels  Map out several different flows to test – Install to invite to interacting – Install to interacting to invite  Balance relevance to throughput – Channel vs Content Applications 24

Slide 25: Viral Channels  News Feed  Notifications  Email  Profile  Invites  Non-user pages  Profile Action 25

Slide 26: Growth Phase Break viral barrier Tune growth (Install vs uninstall) Promote It 26

Slide 27: The Viral Loop Call to action to User invite friends x = invited friends Yes Accept? y% = invite accept rate x * y > 1 gives you viral growth! 27

Slide 28: Tune It Superwall Launched in 2 days tuned for 2 weeks Preview page Invite Messaging Targeting 28

Slide 29: Promote It You know the math works All about throughput to multiply Give it a boost! Ad Networks 29

Slide 30: Engagement Phase Saturated social circles (audiences) Critical mass makes features more useful Tune for experience Build new features to keep users engaged and happy! 30

Slide 31: Critical Mass  You’ve achieved your goal  Percentage of Social Circle supernodes – 40% Active – 10 % of that – 4% of Market 31

Slide 32: Channels  Focus on 1-to-Many to get People Engaged – News Feed – Profile – Notifications – Non User Pages  Focus on 1-to-1 to re-engage current users – Email – Notifications 32

Slide 33: Viral Tuning in Depth

Slide 34: Metrics for your viral loop Call to action to User invite friends x = invited friends Yes Accept? y% = invite accept rate x * y > 1 gives you viral growth! 34

Slide 35: Hypothetical viral numbers  Install flow – x = 5 (friends invited on average) – y = 22% (acceptance rate for invites) – Viral factor = 5 * 0.22 = 1.1 VIRAL!  Engagement flow – Repeat users can generated additional virality! 35

Slide 36: Combine multiple flows and channels  Install flow – x=5 – y = 10% – Viral factor = 5 * 0.1 = 0.5 0.5 + 0.3 + 0.3 = 1.1  Engagement flow, request channel – x = 3 (invites) VIRAL! – y = 10% (acceptance rate for invites) – Viral factor = 3 * 0.1 = 0.3  Engagement flow, notification channel – x = 6 (notifications) – y = 5% (acceptance rate for notifications) – Viral factor = 6 * 0.05 = 0.3 36

Slide 37: Tuning the viral loop – watch your metrics  What to track – Requests sent & request CTR – Notifications sent & notification CTR – Feed events & feed CTR – Adds / removes – And everything else…platform tracking is not 100% reliable  How to track – …if you’re tight on resources (aren’t we all) – Paid or home grown if you’re serious about growing big – Get stats in real time instead of waiting a day – Store events that can’t be tied to a page (i.e. number of requests sent) – Slice and dice data however you want 37

Slide 38: Using metrics to drive product decisions X% user dropoff Y invites sent/user Z% invites accepted Flow A An new users Flow B Bn new users  A/B test entire user flows  A/B test calls to action  Base decisions off of statistically significant data 38

Slide 39: Making the most of viral channels  Graph and compare activity metrics over time to analyze trends  Focus resources on tuning the largest traffic drivers  All viral channels eventually decay – why? – Invites sent decreases due to saturation – Response rate decreases due to user conditioning  So keep tuning to stay ahead of the curve!  …and when you’ve exhausted your primary channels it might be time to explore some creative alternatives 39

Slide 40: Questions?