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With the addition of Facebook’s fbFund to ChubbyBrain, we wanted to take a look at the fbFund portfolio to understand any trends and insights that can be gleaned from the fund’s existing portfolio companies/apps (herein referred to as apps) and their monthly active user statistics. As you may know, the fbFund changed to an incubator type of model recently, and entry applications for the revamped fbFund also just wrapped up at the close of April 2009.
If you missed the deadline but are still interested in developing a Facebook app, it may still be instructive to read Dave McClure’s Apply to fbFund ‘09 post on Facebook’s blog to understand why Facebook can be such a powerful vehicle for app developers. In a nutshell, and as you probably know, a lot of people use Facebook (200 million+), over 70% use FB apps and many app developers are making money and receiving funding.
A couple of notes before we begin:
- This is a strictly quantitative/metrics-driven analysis using data found on Facebook for the various apps.
- For those looking for a silver bullet or recipe that says “Build your app this way or in this area, and it’ll be successful”, we don’t have that answer. Sorry. There is not, as is often the case, a crystal clear well delineated path to Facebook app stardom. What we do have is some interesting food for thought and perhaps some areas that those of you considering Facebook app development should look at.
Our examination of the fbFund portfolio looks at the 29 applications that are publicly available for use by Facebook users. These span the apps backed in the fbFund classes of July 2008 as well as October 2008. This data was taken in mid-April 2009 so we assume the monthly active user figures are for March 2009.
The portfolio was broken into 4 tiers based on the number of monthly active users that each app had. Given one of the main allures Facebook has from a developer’s perspective is it’s massive user population, we thought this was a simple and solid proxy (but not perfect) to gauge the relative success or lack thereof for any of these apps. The dark lines in the table above indicate the distinctions between the various tiers with tier 1 being the most successful through to tier 4.
Only 29 of 35 fbFund apps are considered in this analysis as 6 of the apps didn’t have monthly active user data. All of the 2008 fbFund portfolio apps can be seen here in the fbFund portfolio. The 6 not included in this analysis are Wildfire, Hotberry, Kontagent, Goalcamp, Newsbrane, and Black Drumm. Wildfire, Hotberry and Kontagent are developing capabilities so monthly active user data was not available and in all likelihood wouldn’t be a useful metric to evaluate them. Goalcamp MAU data could not be found (let us know if data is available so we can add them the next time around). And finally Newsbrane and Black Drumm are in limited release or stealth mode thereby limiting data availability.
Below is a graphical representation of the companies and their active monthly users. Tier 1 consists of the top 7 apps which includes the following:
- HitGrab - Game where players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice
- WedSnap - Assist brides and grooms in the wedding planning process
- GroupCard - Lets a group send a card for an occasion
- InfraBlue Tech - Twenty20 cricket fantasy sports game
- Zimride - Carpooling application
- ProfessionalProfile - Consolidates a professional profile onto Facebook
- Trazzler - Travel oriented app to help you determine where you should go
We then looked at the categorization of the aggregate fbFund portfolio. As should be obvious, an app could be in more than 1 category and most were. As expected, the “Just for Fun” category was the biggest category for fbFund app developers but was closely followed by apps in the Utility and Education realm.
What is more interesting, however, is looking at the categories that Tier 1 fbFund apps play in as the graph below illustrates. They are not as evenly distributed across all categories with Education apps coming up empty amongst Tier 1 apps, and only 1 utility app in Tier 1.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Tier 4 apps which are distributed as follows.
We also looked at the number of fans each app had attracted and specifically the ratio of monthly active users to fans for each app. And the results as shown below by tier may be somewhat counter-intuitive. The most popular apps (Tier 1) have a lot of users and on an absolute basis, they also have quite a few fans. But the ratio shows that these popular apps have significantly more users than fans. The ratio for tier 2, 3 and 4 apps is smaller. This begs the question of whether getting fans for one’s app is a driver of user-ship. Determining causality is problematic here so we’ll leave this as food for thought. (Please note that the monthly active users:fan ratio was taken as a weighted average and not a straight average in each tier)
And lastly, as we look at the ratings for each tier (again as a weighted average and not a straight average), there was nothing surprising here as Tier 1 apps had the highest aggregate ratings. Tier 4 ratings were actually not 0.0 but because only one tier 4 app had a rating, this rating was not meaningful.
As mentioned, we’ve taken a very quantitative view of fbFund apps. For those considering the development of Facebook apps, under the auspices of the fbFund or otherwise, may stand to learn from the Tier 1 apps as well as the other apps. We’d also love to hear from you as to what you think are the drivers of success for Facebook apps as many aspiring app developers may benefit from your perspectives.
To view the entire fbFund portfolio, click here or on the fbFund widget below. If you have specific ideas/advice to these app developers to help them improve their monthly active user numbers and app adoption, find their individual company profile within the fbFund portfolio and click the “Write a Review” button.
We look forward to your insights and ideas.
Update: Today (May 18, 2009), Facebook announced the winners of the fbFund ‘09. We’ll refresh our analysis in some time for these apps as well but for those interested, you can read about the fbFund ‘09 winners at VentureBeat or TechCrunch.
May 12th, 2009 at
It would be interesting to see geographic insights on applicants relative to winners. To what extent was that round a Silicon Valley thing, and to what extent was the selection committee staying inside or reaching outside the local culture?
May 13th, 2009 at
Craig - Thanks for the comment as this definitely would be interesting. Unfortunately, we don’t believe data/info on the applicants to fbFund is publicly available so it’ll be hard or impossible to answer your question. That said, if you know where this data is available, let us know as we’d be interested in doing the analysis.
May 13th, 2009 at
Interesting article and great analysis! A small clarification, Podclass MAU is at 8,609, which would place us in Tier 2 of your categorization, which will change your analysis slightly.
Thanks for posting this information. It is definitely interesting looking at the trends of the fbFund apps and any insights that can be gleaned from it.
And Craig, looking at the geography would definitely be interesting. However, I know that many of the fbFund recipients have virtual teams that span the globe. Podclass has developers in New Zealand, Belarus, India and Greece, but the company is base in San Diego.
Gary Gil
Podclass, Inc.
May 13th, 2009 at
Gary-
Thanks for the comment. I think our data on monthly active users was for the prior month so we had you at 956. That seem correct for the prior month? If yes, congratulations on the impressive month over month growth. If we got it wrong, sorry about that.
Glad the overall information is useful/interesting. While there is not a clear determinant/recipe for what makes for a winning FB app, we do think using and showing data could yield some interesting questions at a minimum that existing or aspiring Facebook app developers might learn from.
Interesting point about the dispersed app development team that you have and that others seemingly have as well.
Thanks again,
The Chubby Team
May 13th, 2009 at
[...] ideas on and off Facebook. This afternoon Dave McClure pointed out an article posted by the ChubbyBrain team which analyzes the performance of fbFund applications from the first and second fbFund classes. [...]
May 13th, 2009 at
Hi Team Chubby,
Thanks for putting this together. I just wanted to point out that the MouseHunt app is missing from your list - MouseHunt has been a major success story (currently 473K+ MAU). Also, I may have missed this, but I didn’t see the date that you collected this data listed…
May 13th, 2009 at
Evan - Thanks for the comment. MouseHunt is actually on the list but is listed under it’s parent company name, HitGrab (Per the fbFund page, “MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions.”). But as you’ve rightly pointed out, MouseHunt/HitGrab was a tremendous success from an active users perspective taking the top spot in this list.
To your other point, this data was taken in mid-April 2009 so we assume the monthly figures are for March 2009 although we’re not sure if Facebook measures these data points on a calendar months basis or if they’re “rolling months”. We’ll update the post to reflect this. Good catch so thanks for pointing that out.
Regards,
The Chubby Team
May 13th, 2009 at
[...] post is in response to ChubbyBrain’s excellent analysis of past recipients of the Facebook Fund. The data presented by ChubbyBrain was extensive, but they [...]
May 13th, 2009 at
We’d recommend everyone check out’s Alex’s blog (http://www.alexonsager.com/102/) as he takes some of the data we presented about the fbFund portfolio and offers several insightful comments & ideas.
Alex- Thanks for taking our data and adding excellent color commentary. Great stuff.
Regards,
The Chubby Team
May 13th, 2009 at
Nice analysis, but for the love of Science, use log scales on those big-ass (that’s a technical term I picked up from Dave McClure) charts. The 400k users totally swamps all other data and that makes the chart very hard to interpret.
May 13th, 2009 at
Hey Bruce,
Glad you liked the analysis. We’d also violently agree with your recommendation to use log scales on our big-ass charts going forward. We may revisit this analysis in some months to see where things stand with these apps (and any that are coming out of fbFund 09) so we’ll be sure to make that change then. Thanks for the suggestion.
Warm regards,
The Chubby Team
May 14th, 2009 at
nice piece guys. for the record, note that many apps with lower usage / higher productivity might also be interesting for other reasons than just total # of users.
that said, we’ll have some interesting companies to announce soon as part of our upcoming 50 finalists for fbFund 2009, as well as the eventual participants in the summer incubator program.
i think you’ll see a number of companies with more focus on using Facebook Connect in utility / productivity categories, with potentially significant transactional components that may be different profile than high-usage on-platform apps. still, we’ll have a good bit of both i think.
again, congrats on the excellent writeup… nice job.
- dave mcclure
May 14th, 2009 at
Dave - Thanks for kind words. We completely concur that monthly active users cannot be the “be all, end all” metric to gauge success especially for utility/productivity category apps which may be enabling other capabilities.
We’re looking forward to seeing what comes out of fbFund 2009 and to also seeing how the changes to the fund’s format/structure will benefit the companies over time. We’ll likely refresh this analysis at some point and will divide the apps into categories (they’re TBD at this point but for example - high-usage apps vs utility/productivity/capability enabling) so that we’re focusing on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter and comparing the right apps vs one another.
We’ll look forward to reaching out to you to get your perspective on the KPIs we choose in the next go around.
In the interim, we’ll look forward to seeing the 50 finalists.
Warm regards,
The Chubby Team
May 18th, 2009 at
[...] And perhaps due to the growing revenue coming from companies on the platform, the fund will begin making direct capital investments this year. Meaning Founders Fund and Accel will get equity stakes in these companies. Previously, fbFund only gave out grants. Bonus: For a mostly quantitative look at how winners from the fbFund’s past two rounds have done, check out this article. [...]
May 18th, 2009 at
[...] Analyzing Facebook’s fbFund Winners: A Mostly Quantitative Look fbFund Winner Statistics - How Do You Compare & Evaluate Platform Apps? By the Chubby [...]
June 16th, 2009 at
[...] in which we looked at the first two classes of the fbFund and evaluated their progress to-date, (Analyzing Facebook’s fbFund Winners: A Mostly Quantitative Look) we wanted to go back and address one of the main questions that came up around evaluating platform [...]