Conversion Matters

So anyone who uses Facebook must be aware of the multitude of applications that you get ‘invited’ to try and most people find it a bit annoying.

One of the reasons a lot of people don’t like them is because by default they completely clutter up your profile page. However, often the applications are intriguing. And it’s possible to add an application without actually adding it to your profile or really letting anyone know you’ve added it.

The following has happened to me twice now. I can’t remember what the first application was but the second was ‘What kind of lingerie are you’. I thought to myself, hey I’m bored, this will waste two minutes. However, it wasn’t something I really wanted other people to know I was looking at ;] so I unticked all the boxes that would place it on my profile. I went through and answered all the questions and was ready to find out if I was a thong or a pair of boxers when I came to a page that says I must invite 20 people before I can view the results.

Hold on a minute.. is this allowed? It’s a very sneaky marketing trick. It’s a sure fire way to increase application exposure. I felt quite angered by this yesterday when I started writing this, though now most of that emotion has faded away but I still think it’s wrong of the application developers to force people into inviting people. There was literally no other way of seeing the results so I just deleted the application.

I think facebook need to look into this, application developers shouldn’t be allowed to force people into inviting their friends to use the application. I still don’t know what type of lingerie I am :[…