O'Reilly Says Hits Rule, Even on Facebook

David Card | October 08, 2007, 02:37 PM

According to this report, 87% of Facebook application usage goes to 84 of the 5,000 apps on the platform. I am unfamiliar with the report's methodology -- it looks like a lot of manual gruntwork over a limited time period (a perfectly respectable way to do this) -- but I'm completely unsurprised at the results. "Cumulative advantage", "network effect," whatever you want to call it, plays out huge in viral distribution. All the more reason for some other app promotion vehicle, as suggested by my colleague Emily Riley. And as usual, it's not enough to recognize there is such thing as a long tail, it's how to make money or competitive advantage off of aggregating it.