Why Do Some Facebook Applications Force You To Invite Friends

Developers of Facebook applications generally rely on viral marketing to get the news out about their products to the public.

Simply put, viral marketing relies on word of mouth, or friends recommending a product to others.

All the applications that I have used ask users to invite friends, and most give the option of skipping this when you first sign up!

Lately though, more applications have started forcing users to invite friends before they can access the application.

I have a problem with this, as I tend to wonder what sort of friend would recommend something that they hadn’t even tried?

This has led to a culture clash on Facebook recently, with a number of groups springing up to counter this trend, and to name and shame these applications.

Lists have been drawn up of applications that force invitations, and a number of negative reviews have begun to appear on the walls of these applications because of this practice.

But Why Would Application Developers Do This?

The obvious answer is that the more active users an application has, they can sell more advertising at a higher price, or even fetch a higher price if they sell the application itself!

What sort of an increase in users can occur with forced invitations?

Although I haven’t been able to verify the figures, I have been told that an increase of up to 1,000% is possible.

So for a business looking at increasing users or subscribers, it seems to be a smart move.

Whether it is ethical though, is another question.

The questions that need to be asked, are how much do the application owners care about their members, and are they looking for return traffic?

Most of the applications that I’m aware of that continually force invitations from members/users, seem to be garbage anyway.

The churn rate of users must be sky high, and from all reports, customer satisfaction quite low.

Contrast this with a quality application such as Blog Friends, a program that I will quite happily promote at any opportunity, because of the value that it gives me personally, as well as thousands of other users.

To counter the trend of continually forcing invitations, Rodney Rumford and I have started a group with the intention of highlighting, and promoting, Facebook applications that don’t force invitations.

Say Yes To Great Apps That Don’t Force Invites! is a Facebook group that is building a list of quality applications that don’t force users to invite friends.

Why not look me up next time you’re on Facebook?

I enjoy linking up with readers and subscribers from my blog, as well as friends from Stumbleupon, Twitter and Blogcatalog!

Don’t forget to check out the new group, post great applications and join in the discussion.

My Usual Disclaimer: Apart from enjoying being a member of Facebook, I have no connection with the company, and do not claim to speak on its behalf.

I have no financial interest, or connection with Facebook applications other than using them, and being friends with some developers on social networking sites.