Now that we have over 250,000 users (in less than 4 weeks), we’ve developed a decent sized database to gather statistics from.

Research Findings:

• 78% of all users are between the ages of 19 and 29

• 19-year olds make up over 15% of all users (the largest group) - see the histogram

• The age group that invites the most friends are people over the age of 30 and under the age of 16
• England, Canada, United States and Croatia (in that order) make up the largest user installations, with Croatia almost tied with the United States
• For our projects “Happy Pills” and “You and Me” they receive over 180,000 daily page views and over 36,000 daily active users, which means:
• ~7,500 page views per hour
• ~125 page requests per second over three dedicated servers
• Pageviews are up 400% over last week’s and should increase by another 100% next week
• The most popular times are between the hours 9AM to 4PM (PST)

Summary:

• Growth is in INTERNATIONAL markets not DOMESTIC (U.S)
• The sensitivity of the experienced U.S. users’ reluctance to install new applications is being offset - mostly - by the tremendous growth of Facebook’s popularity in international markets (i.e. Croatia, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia)
• England is the fastest growing market, eclipsing all countries by 4x!!!
• The top 2 to 4% of applications appear to make up over 99% of all daily active users - if you’re not in the top 4% you’re not making $$
• Simple “HUG ME” and “KISS ME” applications are all all decaying fast in daily activity (i.e. KissMe) due to several factors: (a) novelty is played out, (b) competition is fierce and rapid, (c) these apps exhibit “spam-like” qualities that are turning users off, and (d) the utility (i.e. engagement) of these applications is pitifully low.

The beauty of launching apps in Facebook and other social platforms is that you get real-time results: the good and the bad.

“You and Me?” shot up to 7,000 users within three days, but it’s growth has waned and plateaued; “Happy Pills”, strangely enough, has continued to gain ground and is now ranked # 166 (up 20 positions over last week) out of 11,300 apps.

You and Me is a real-time match-making service where it facilitates the meeting of interested-people through three simple buttons: Yes or No or Maybe. If a user says “yes” or “maybe” to someone and that someone says “yes” or “maybe” back then it’s a match. Happy Pills is a very simple application where you send “happy pills” to friends - and strangers - to cheer them up. The algorithms that drive You and Me are much more complex than Happy Pills’.
We’ve changed You and Me’s algorithms for user recruitment and imagery on the first page, and made a number of other changes which resulted in real-time results and information in helping us make rational decisions. What have we learned? Match-making may be the wrong position in Facebook. Saying “YES” to someone - I think - is more about feeding someone’s vanity than it is about match-making. Why? We mocked up a really HOT girl’s profile and she said “YES” to a number of guys. About ~20% of the guys said “YES” back. We’ve also noticed that there have been over 10,000 matches made but slightly less than 3,000 messages have been exchanged between the matching parties. What does this mean?
The data is telling me that match-making may not be the ideal position in Facebook, it’s a good position - but not a great one. We’re aiming for 100,000 daily active users - not just 8,000 daily active users. Don’t get me wrong, 8,000 daily active users is an incredible feat to achieve within a week but we’re aiming higher than that. We want over 100,000 daily active users.

What’s next for You and Me? Vanity. We’re going to make some changes and see what happens. It may work, or it won’t. That’s the beauty of creating apps in social platforms you get immediate results, sometimes within hours and at most within a day or two.

The well caffeinated marketer is well caffeinated today, in fact I’m sipping a nice cuppa pu’erh (tea) at Julie’s Tea, Coffee & Herb in the Bay Area.

Pu’erh tea is an acquired taste. It’s tea that has been put through “secret” preparation in China. The secret preparation, of Pu’erh, usually includes lumping huge stacks of unprocessed recently picked tea leaves in a warehouse and letting it sit for months, usually underneath a large tarp. After some time, the tea is then smashed into shape, usually large circles, rectangles or squares about 1.5 inches thick and 6″ to 15″ in width. Pu’erh, was used as a form of currency back in the day. Can you imagine, drinking currency? Interesting, huh? Well I dig this stuff. Some people say that it tastes like old locker room socks, and to be honest that’s - sometimes - not too far from the truth…ha ha. Like I said, it’s an acquired taste.
Yummmmy…the tea is delicious. It has a nice earthy flavor with a hint of ginger and flowers that linger in my mouth for minutes - like a nice glass of wine. I love tea. With MacBook in hand I’m reading the latest news and updates on what’s going on in the social web space. The web - once again - is shattering into a thousand little pieces to reform and coalesce into a few dominant players, again. Oh Joy!!!!!

- Mark

This is old news, but Bebo the ailing social network site (3rd in the U.S.) licensed Facebook’s API and claims to be 100% compatible.   This is very exciting news, because this is our second chance to be amongst the first in an open social platform, again.  We missed the boat when Facebook first opened up their API, we won’t make that same mistake twice when Hi5, Orkut, and others open up their social platforms.  We’ll be ready.
Tomorrow I’m taking the day off - I’m going shopping in San Francisco; however, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will be very long days for me.  We’re updating KlickNation.com, applying for some trademarks (legal stuff), launching a new application, and porting one to two applications to Bebo and we will be reviewing the Friendster API.  We’re still deliberating the decision to develop on Friendster or not.  They have their own proprietary libraries and APIs, some standardization would be nice.  We looked at Google’s Open Social APIs and they are lacking and half-finished.
A friend of mine visited me today, Meliza from UC Davis.  She’s an attorney.  It was good to see her again.  After b-school school, all of us can get so caught up in the daily maintenance of things that we forget to stop, breath and say hi to our friends.  Thanks Meliza for stopping by the yogurt shop to say “hi.”  It was good to see you.

I’m mentally celebrating at the office at this very moment, You and Me hit 30,000 users a couple of hours ago.  We’re one day ahead of schedule and anticipate reaching our 100,000 user goal by the end of next week.  By the end of the month we should have between 250,000 to 300,000 users if we continue to grow virally.  If we hit these goals then I’ll believe in Christmas again

Happy Holidays,

- Mark

It almost feels like, the closer we get to meeting our goal, as a team, the farther we seem from it. Do you ever feel that way too? Or is it that we raise the bar even higher? I’m rather philosophical this morning, opening mochii yogurt this morning - alone - has given me some time to reflect. Two customers walked in and ordered their usual, a medium combination with three toppings. It’s 11:28AM (PST).
Where was I? Oh yes - goal-setting and the journey ahead. Everyday I feel like we’re a week behind. Time feels more compressed than it ever has for me: Facebook opens up it’s platform and the rules change - for everyone who is an online company. This is in some ways the new social internet.

This morning I checked our numbers for two of our popular applications: You and Me? and Happy Pills. These two applications are inching-up and out maneuvering other applications who have two to three months on us, which is like eternity in this environment. We’re brand new, but as hungry and ambitious as they come.
You and Me?

You and Me is now ranked # 333 (in six days!!) and Happy Pills is ranked #183 (in three weeks) out of 11,300 apps (I think that’s the number). I look purely at “daily active users” as that’s the number that drives page views -> referrals -> and eventually revenue. Install base, is sometimes inconsequential to driving revenue. It’s activity- and the magic ratio. The magic ratio? Yes. The magic ratio. Within three to four days you will know if your application is viral or not. If it’s not, then it’s usually best to move on. I will discuss this ratio in another blog post.
The Future and Beyond: TOP 100
As for the future, “there’s no sleep for the weary.” We’re working at least 14 to 16-hour days, six to seven days a week - sometimes 24-hours a day. Our goal is to break into the top-100 within two months. That’s a tall order and will require more than just having a popular app. It will require statistical analysis, fine-tuning, targeted messaging for acquisition, and speed-to-market to propel us above and beyond our peers. For now, we’re gathering data and will be mining that data for that extra 5 to 10% increase in traffic.

We are in this to win.