Why Create a Facebook App?

The other night my friend yelled at me: “I hate Facebook!” I didn’t know if he was yelling because it was a crowded bar, or because he really truly does hate Facebook. What he’s learned, he told me later when it had quieted down, is that it’s a necessary evil in his line of work- creating a hub for interesting, crowd-sourced content.

The magic of Facebook for entrepreneurs is that it is a 500-million strong environment of active, engaged users, largely killing time while they’re at work. They are tolerant, mellow, and don’t expect much. You can wow them. The magic is to engage on Facebook, not to simply present yourself. Essentially: move beyond the “like.”

This is where apps loom large. Create an activity that leverages their friends, their personality, and do it with humor and creativity. For this reason, make sure to design an application that works with the very powerful Social Graph- what friends are telling their friends, what photos are tagged with them, what comments and likes are occurring, all of that data is available as a form of connections between the objects that people share. Become part of that conversation, and you will create a very rich, very meaningful experience.

I was bubbling over with ideas for my friend, but it answers the essential question- why build an app? What can be gained? Do we send them to our site the moment they “like” or do we continue to engage on Facebook? The optimum choice would be not a choice, but to keep both options open. Provide relevance on the Facebook page, and off on the domain. Nest the domain in a tab, and also provide Facebook-specific app that leverages the Social Graph.

cateogories: App Development, Apps, Blog