Screwing the App guys & Marketers #Facebook
Facebook made a small change a couple of days back which seems to have gone unnoticed by many.
What did they do?
Go to you ‘Home’ and see the RHS panel. Events / Birthdays are now on the top and ‘Requests’ have been pushed down below ‘Suggestions’ and ‘Sponsored’.
So how has this changed things?
Was talking to a leading developer of FB apps and he shared these numbers.
Earlier the CTR for an app/page invite was 3%.
i.e. if a user invited a friend to your app or suggested your ‘fan/brand’ page to his friends, the chances of the friend accepting the invitation was 3% (on an average).
Now the re-positioning of this has changed this CTR by nearly 70% and the CTR has gone down to below 1%.
Why has Facebook done this?
Marketers will now have to spend money and advertise on FB. Its just that FB has finally realised that Social Gaming companies and Social Media Marketers are actually raking in far more money than FB itself…and they just want to show them who is the boss.
This comes after pissing off most of the developers by enforcing the FB Credits system…which will rob app developers of nearly 30% of their revenues. For a company which is say earning USD 1M from their facebook app…suddenly a loss of 30% revenue is going to pinch them hard. Its going to make lives for companies like Social Gold (and other platforms which provide in-flash payments) even more difficult.
Who’s your daddy now? eh?
