Be very, very careful when using Facebook Open Graph to grow.

Why?

Facebook Open Graph can turn on you like it turned on BranchOut, Viddy, and Socialcam.

And they said no exponential was forever!

Exponential decay eventually ends.

I'm going to post a video with Josh Elman this Thursday. In it, he talks about "quality" of growth being the most important thing after growth itself. Any growth is worth investigating, but spikey growth won't lead to any reasonable conclusions.

Amen to that, brother.

What's funny is that, sitting on the entrepreneur side of the table, here's a majority of the meetings I have with investors right now:

Investor: "How many users do you have?"

Me: insert number here, growing at insert growth rate here

Investor: "Good, good. Be sure to call me when you have millions of users."

Quality growth takes time.

Adam this is so funny. heard that a lot too.

Shinyoung, yes!

When we have millions of users, are we really going to remember who asked us to "be sure to call them"?

I believe it was Marilyn Monroe who said,

If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best.

Or something like that...

This is perfect! wish I can find a perfect match who can handle my worst.

sounds a lot like L.O.V.E :D

LOL. Millions of users. Because they read about viddy and socialcam on techcrunch or AngelList.

At the end of the day, cash is king for founders. Viddy and socialcam -- just like Jeremy Lin -- optimized for cash, and now they'll have war chests to go #slow. http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/story/_/id/8168960/stephen-smith-new-york-knicks-better-jeremy-lin

"Lin was about the Benjamins when Linsanity made the cover of Time magazine. He definitely was overcome by dollar signs when he wouldn't play at "85 percent" for the New York Knicks in the playoffs, and it was all about the bottom line once free agency arrived."

I'm still convinced that BranchOut, Viddy, and Socialcam employed bribery, porn, and spam to grow to so many users so quickly: http://pandawhale.com/convo/3127/bribery-porn-and-spam-are-the-path-to-riches-in-the-app-world-wired-business-wiredcom

The biggest problem in mobile is retention.

True but other apps like vevo & spotify and games like diamond dash have grown fast and continue to grow through open graph. It's an abuse issue bottom line.

Or it's a "Facebook wants them to succeed"' bottom line: http://allthingsd.com/20120516/socialcam-facebook-viddy/

Mike Issac wrote:

Consider this: When the once-popular Facebook social reading apps like the Guardian and Washington Post Social Reader recently started tanking in their monthly active user ratings, Ryan Kellett, a Washington Post employee, confirmed to TechCrunch that it was indeed changes in Facebook’s News Feed that led to Social Reader’s decline. It’s feasible, then, to think that Facebook could tweak things in the other direction, in order to favor video apps.

Perhaps Facebook turned on the viral channel for all the video apps, and then shut off the channel for apps it thought weren't as good for the Facebook user experience?

Spotify is a special case since they gave Facebook something in exchange for favored-nation status: http://www.pcworld.com/article/240646/spotify_adds_facebook_requirement_angering_users.html

It was basically spam..the difference with spotify,vevo and games like diamond dash is that it's more user pushed and they are great experiences.

I think that you're right that great experiences are key.