Facebook's Recently Used Apps Module & The Larger Relationship with App Ecosystem

Last week I wrote about Facebook's newsfeed clustering of posts published by the same applications. While it is interesting as a signal of the newsfeed's evolution - it is represents the larger theme of Facebook relationship, promotion, and integration of applications (and the larger application ecosystem). Obviously Facebook has always been supportive of the ecosystem - from Zynga & LOLapps (gaming) to Spotify & Pinterest (content) to Wantful & ShoeDazzle (off-Facebook commerce), etc. In fact, yesterday's news was that "visitors from Facebook accounted for 1.1 billion visits to iOS and HTML5 apps, meaning an average of more than 6 visits per user."

The emergence of Facebook's Timeline, Open Graph and the proliferation of applications atop the platform (mobile, newsfeed, ticker, etc) - Facebook relationship with applications is evolving:

- How do they cluster by type and by shared users? (example here)

- How do they cluster by recency (example below with "Recent Used Apps")

- How do they cluster by popularity (example of trending here)

- How do they prevent the Ticker and newsfeed from being overwhelmed by content? (more here)

- What role does Timeline and off-Facebook play here?

- And ultimately, what does this mean for Facebook's off-Facebook.com strategy: promotion, monetization, mobile, etc?

Ravenwood Fair Passes 10m Monthly Users

I'm a sucker for info-graphics... and here is a really good one to help celebrate the success of LOLapp's Ravenwood Fair social game (note: LOLapps is a Polaris-backed company). Recently Ravenwood Fair hit a few notable benchmarks: namely surpassing 10,000,000 monthly actives and 1,000,000 daily actives.

While the info-graphic is fun... the data and social 'math' is both impressive and important (purchasing habits, virtual goods, LTV, et ). The LOLapps team is deeply analytical (as you would image with a gaming company) and highly skilled at determining ... and affecting ... "social clusters" (which affects virality and value).

LOLapps Releases New Website, Sees Facebook Growth with Yakuza Life & Band of Heroes

Polaris portfolio company LOLapps has launched a new version of their website to conclude an active week where two of their new social games (Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes) are the 8th and 9th fastest growing on Facebook. If you are unfamiliar with LOLapps, you have probably used one of their applications on Facebook: over 44 million people use LOLapps apps each month:

- Quizzes (hundreds of thoussd of personally created quiz applications) - Gifts (user generated gift creator) - Diva Life - Band of Heroes - Yakuza Lords

Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are both new games and are growing very quickly on Facebook. From InsideFacebook's Top Gainers of the Week:

"Two other role-playing games are also growing fast, and although neither lists a developer, both appear to be made by LOLapps. While both have the same underlying interface components (more on that over on ISG), each one has surprisingly striking, unique-looking graphics. One, Asian mafia-themed Yakuza Lords, grew by 155,000 users to reach 930,000 monthly actives. It is on its way to graduating from this list. The other app, World War II RPG Band of Heroes, is smaller but growing relatively more quickly. It gained 161,000 to reach 269,000 monthly actives."

Diva City, Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are just the first for LOLapps: "[we] will be launching a new game every few weeks to address the huge demand and niches that our users care about."

If you are interested in partnering with LOLapps, you can contact them and learn more here.

LOLapps: Reaches 22% of Facebook Users

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Never heard of LOLapps? Don't worry - most of their 44,000,000 active monthly users probably haven't either.

LOLapps enables users to easily create custom Facebook Apps using their tools. The basic application templates are currently quizzes and gifts (with more robust gaming templates on the way). So while you have likely not heard of LOLapps (as you have heard of Slide or RockYou) - you have likely encountered a gift or taken a quiz that was built using LOLapps. In fact, they now reach 22% of Facebook users (44m monthly).

Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's Toop Developers by monthly reach. LOLapps doesn't appear in those reports because they do not show up as the developer of each application. Their 44,000,000 monthly uniques though would put them on par with Zynga at the #1 spot. As an example, take a look of one of their top Apps: "What Sex in the City Character are You?"

Nearly 200,000 users - which is a big number. But to reach 44m, you begin to realize how many long-tail quizzes and gifts have been created!

Read more about LOLapps on: - LOLapps.com - ReadWriteWeb - InsideFacebook