Facebook Apps

ePresident

Formerly known as “FB President”, this was the first Facebook app we made, and to date probably still the best known (though not the largest). The idea is simple: run for “president of Facebook”, get all your friends to vote for you.

Things got really fun in January 2008, when the winner, Arash Derambarsh, convinced the French media that the title he had won through this application carried real weight. There are many articles about this story, Techcrunch has a good summary. Although Facebook did ask us to change the name of the application as a result of all this attention, they took it remarkably well, and everyone we talked to at Facebook seemed mostly amused by it.

This app is also a great example of how important execution is. When it launched, there were two or three other “Facebook president” apps. However, we focused the app design with two goals: as simple to use as possible, and as much emphasis on inviting friends (and thus grow the app) as possible. With zero marketing or promotion beyond the initial invites to our friends, the app took off and showed a classic example of viral growth, while the other apps - same idea, slightly different implementation - never approached this growth.

Top Models

Formerly known as “FB Models”, this app branched out and evolved from the original FB President app. We also have regional variations: UK Models, Canadian Beauty, American Models, Hot Europeans, and Aussie Beauty.

At their peak, these apps were receiving close to 6 million pageviews a month, and they currently have over 1 million installs.

Regional differences are interesting: although all the apps are identical, the American version never grew as well as the others.