Remember the days when you couldn’t login to Facebook without a cheery message alerting that you’d been bitten? Or for the more polite friends, that you’ve received an invitation to be bitten? Or something like that?
Then you were probably, like me, under the spell of the Facebook Zombie Application (and maybe later, for the brave souls, the vampire and werewolf varieties of the same app). You had to turn as many friends into zombies to earn points (read: the more people that install the application, the better).
In my journey to find out why widgets are representative of the web 2.0 movement (and how they are changing the web as they evolve), I wanted to go back and look at one of the most popular widgets, and how it encapsulates the evolution of the social web.
1. It is viral
The zombie app is literally viral — you “infect” all your friends until presumably the entire population is infected. Unlike traditional apps, a widget’s usefulness increases the more people install and use it.
2. It is social
The Zombie app cannot be downloaded and used in any traditional way; I cannot download it, install it on my desktop, disconnect from the Internet and have fun. The developer retains more of the control by making it Facebook-specific. I have to log on to use it, and I have to spread it to win it — developers can keep track of how their users use it, when they’re using it, and when they stop using it. On top of that, as a user, this can change the way we look at applications; they are no longer stand alone but rely on social processes (and an Internet connection).
3. It is brand-able
After the zombie application suite became wildly popular, brands started getting interested; later releases of the app were sponsored by films, like Sony’s film 30 Days of Night. This is hugely indicative of where the web is going — content is flexible, personalizeable, and constantly evolving to become profitable for a wider variety of users.
One Comment
B”H
This is a rapidly expanding business with more and more potential as younger users get on-line. I think this is going to be something that entertainment CEOs have to consider in their approaches to marketing in the future.