Finding the Facebook Influencers

Influencers the Key to Facebook Application Growth

I had an interesting conversation with a friend where we were discussing the viral growth of Facebook applications and how developers of applications can positively influence the growth in users of their application. One of the things that came up, which I thought was brilliant, and could be rather easy to accomplish, was the role of getting the right influencers on Facebook to add your application to their profile. This idea is similar to Seth Godin’s “Sneezer” idea. Get someone popular to use your application. They try it out. They love it. They tell everyone they know. Your application spreads.

Who are the Influencers on Facebook?

Finding Facebook influencers should not be very difficult. Facebook influencers are the :rock stars” within their perspective group, high school, college, or organization. These are the “popular kids” - influencers are the ones that everyone else wants to be. The one issue with finding Facebook influencers is that they are more often then not found offline;unlike MySpace where most profiles are public, making it easy to find those with lots of friends, the majority of Facebook profiles are closed so influencers are found through parties, groups, teams, blogs, etc making it difficult to scale your efforts outside of certain geographical locations.

Even though there are limitations, Facebook application developers should be proactive in seeking out Facebook influencers; even if they are only in your geographic location. As an application developer you can not expect to launch a Facebook application and expect it to grow virally. Just like any product or service, you need to “sell” and “market” your application to your perspective customers. Finding and getting influencers to use your application will only accelerate your other efforts.

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