Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [25]
Help users communicate and share information more efficiently
This is the key value proposition that the Facebook Social Graph offers: make it easy for people to find information about their friends and they’ll add their own information to the network. If you can tap into an area of people’s lives that they want to share with other people, you’ll see much better adoption. Ask yourself, “What’s the value of the information I’m helping people share?” and, “How can I make the process of sharing this as efficient as possible?”
Generate more meaningful activity
Facebook Platform is drowning in apps that deliver little value to their users because the activities undertaken in the apps are valueless. If your application doesn’t include activities that users can do with each other (e.g., tagging their friends in photos), there’s very little meaningful activity generated into the social graph, and consequently your app won’t spread. Ask yourself, “What’s the value of the activity my app adds to the social graph?” and, “How can I add value to the activities my users do with their friends both inside and outside my app?”
Provide valuable information to users
In a world in which you’re competing with tens of thousands of apps for attention, the higher the value of the information you provide to your users, the more likely they are to return. This is a classic application of the signal-to-noise ratio principle. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_to_noise_ratio):
Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is an electrical engineering concept, also used in other fields (such as scientific measurements, biological cell signaling), defined as the ratio of a signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal.
In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is.
For our purposes, think of the valuable information your app provides as signal, and the valueless information you and the other 20,000 apps provide as noise. Ask yourself, “Can my users find the signal in all the noise?” and, “What can I do to amplify the signal and suppress the noise?”
Increase user trust
Every relationship is based on trust, including the one your users form with your app. The more that users trust your app, the more likely they are to invite their friends and to make it part of their Facebook experience. Remember that you can artificially earn trust, but you’ll lose it all if users figure out that you’ve lied or misled them. Ask yourself, “Would I trust this app if I hadn’t built it?”, “Which aspects will make users lose trust?”, and, “What can I do to build trust?”
Community Gardening
—Will Pate (see his bio in Contributors)
Problem
I’m an experienced developer, but now I want to build a community around my application.
Solution
Interact with your users every way you can. Listen, respond quickly, and always be friendly.
Think of a community like it’s a party, and you’re the host. You have to set the table, welcome the guests as they arrive, help them with anything they need, and do it all with a smile.
Discussion
Before you launch your application, create a short list of questions you would like to ask your users. “What do you like the most?”, “What do you like the least?”, and “What’s missing?” are good questions to start with. Too many questions can be overwhelming, so embrace constraints.
Next, create a list of places to check regularly for feedback. Your application page can have discussion forums, reviews, and a Wall.