The other day, we looked at how the Facebook redesign has shaken up app popularity. The top apps lost their spots, and LivingSocial‘s “Pick Your Five” has taken over as the most popular app on Facebook.
I conducted a little Q&A with LivingSocial’s CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy to get some insight into how his company’s app became so popular, when the redesign seemed to negatively affect many other popular apps.
“LivingSocial designed “Pick Your Five” using the new feed made available by the Facebook redesign and ‘Stream’ in an effort to tap into the most popular activities among our users,” O’Shaughnessy tells Murdok. “It’s user-friendly, and we’ve found that our users are really enjoying showing their friends what their favorite things are, especially because they have such a broad range of interests to choose from on LivingSocial.”
When asked about LivingSocial’s revenue model, O’Shaughnessy says, “With 27 million users, LivingSocial has a core user base to 1) Strike affiliate deals and provide new customer scale to retailers, and 2) Be able to allow manufactures to move the needle for their products by targeting users based on their previous consumption history. For example, if a user has read a John Grisham book previously, we can help the publisher target that reader as the newest Grisham book is released.”
I asked O’Shaughnessy what advice he has for a social media app developer for increasing an app’s popularity.
“Your user base is in the social space – don’t forget that,” he says. “The goal of your app should first and foremost be to 1) provide some value to the user that they cannot get elsewhere and 2) give them an opportunity to share that value with their friends.”
“Keep your app incredibly simple and beware of injecting too many additional concepts into the core user experience. Simple usually wins,” he adds.
I’d like to thank Tim for taking the time to answer a few questions. On a somewhat-related note, InsideFacebook reports that Facebook Platform payment providers saw strong growth in the first quarter.
