Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

FamilyLink

FamilyLink (www.familylink.com) started out as a Facebook application that existed on top of Facebook.com called “We're Related.” The application worked to identify who your family members were on Facebook, and then sought to allow you to identify common ancestors between you and your friends.

In just a matter of days, FamilyLink went from just a few users to over 2 million users because of what Facebook offered, encouraging people to invite their friends and family to use the application. (See Figure 17-5.) The application used the following integration points, to name a few, to become popular:

• The news feed: FamilyLink posted updates to users' news feeds when new family members were connected. This got others aware of the connections being made, encouraging others to also want to try out the application.
• Application invites: This, I believe, was a key part to FamilyLink's success. Throughout each step of the process, users of the application were encouraged to invite their friends to become members of their family tree. An invitation from a family member is a lot of pressure to try out an application, and the invitations were worded such that it almost seemed necessary to join the family tree so that the family tree could be completed. Recipients were asked to “accept” the add, and when they did, they too were required to authorize the We're Related application, and they were encouraged to build their own family tree.
• E-mail updates: Later, FamilyLink was able to ...