Alexandre Roche
Product Designer at Facebook, 2.5 years
Interface Design, think about how things should work, etc
Before FB, started Dogbook with my dad, Geoffrey Roche
Here’s my dad - you can find him on Twitter
always thinking about how to reach consumers
I thought it was crazy too.
My dad originally proposed it at the dinner table.
Start it, sell it or cobrand with a major pet food company.
Didn’t really understand the whole dog thing.
Some people love dogs more than kids.
At that point, the FB platform didn’t exist yet, so it had to be a standalone site.
Your friends wouldn’t be there.
It just didn’t feel like it would work to me.
But then in May 2007, the Facebook platform launched.
I really wanted to start an app, and so the Dog social network idea resurfaced.
It only took me about 2-3 weeks.
I literally copied Facebook, but made it for dogs. Friend requests, pets instead of poke, wall posts, etc.
Here’s what the original version looked like. A lot like Facebook right?
Good thing about copying FB’s interface elements is that users are already familiar with them.
Dogbook took off really fast. Now we have 1 million monthly users.
And over 3 million dogs.
We realized that a lot of people aren’t always with their Dogs or their computers, but they have their phone.
So we created Dogbook for the iPhone. It’s wildy successful - 100,000 downloads.
As you would expect we have made quick work of capitilizing on other pet-related applications.
Here’s what Catbook looks like. It’s also quite successful - 200,000 monthly users.
So I thought I’d give some tips on building great applications.
This is based on the thinking that made Dogbook great.
Great applications are personal.
The user can relate to the content in a real and meaningful way.
So with Dogbook, It’s your dog. Your friends are friends with your dog. And your friends’ dogs write on your dog’s wall. There’s all these very personal interactions going on.
Brings you closer to other people you wouldn’t otherwise be close to, like people from high school. Because they’re friends with your dog.
Farmville is personal too.
You’re building your own little world for yourself. It’s not just high scores - you’re creating and building something. And that makes people to come back to it.
Like Dogbook, it also connects people with long lost friends. Your neighbors are your friends, and you go visit them, even if they’re not close friends. Now you have something to relate to.
If you want people to come back, make it personal.
The cool thing about social marketing is that you can do things that aren’t directly related to your business.
If you’re a pet food company, it’s obvious what matters to your customers. Their pets. So Dogbook is a nice fit.
But what if you’re Burger King.
BK realized that a lot of the people who visit their restaurants also play a lot of video games.
So their ad agency, CP+B, created these custom Xbox video games that were sold in the BK locations for $3.99 each.
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3.5 million copies were sold.
Now if you look a successful app like Farmville, you wonder if someone could have created it as a branded app.
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Well why not Whole foods?
All about organic, sustainable farming. Maybe every day a whole foods truck comes to your farm, and you need to meet the quota. Keeps people coming back to the game too.
If you take away the whole foods branding, farmville is still a compelling app.
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It’s great to have an app that incentivizes people to play by having coupons at the end of a level, but wouldn’t it be great if they wanted to play even there weren’t coupons. That’s what you have to aim for.
When it comes to marketing on FB, remember that you’re at a big cocktail party
You wouldn’t go to a cocktail party and scream your message at everyone.
You gotta be smooth. You have to figure out a way to weave yourself into these social interactions that are happening. Dogbook does that by creating new social interactions that matter to people. Same with Farmville.
Consumers are there first to interact with their friends. Brands are second. So you have to acknowledge that.
When it comes to marketing on FB, remember that you’re at a big cocktail party
