Facebook App Developers Square Off: RockYou! Overtakes Slide
Back in August, we noted that most of the very big Facebook apps seem to be owned by Slide or RockYou!. At that point Slide had the most popular Facebook app (in terms of users), with Top Friends.
Context & Ripple Effects
The race Read/WriteWeb flagged in August has flipped: when it profiled Facebook's application "rock stars", Slide held the single most popular app with Top Friends and, together with RockYou!, owned most of the biggest apps on the platform. As of early December, RockYou! has overtaken Slide to claim the most popular apps by total user count — a lead change at the top of a two-horse market barely five months after the platform opened.
Slide's response so far has been acquisition rather than invention: in June it bought the Favorite Peeps app for $60k, a signal that user-count leadership was being bought as much as built. The timing also matters — this contest is playing out against Facebook's own Beacon privacy backlash of late November and early December, meaning the platform's top developers are jockeying while trust questions hang over the ecosystem itself. VentureBeat's same-day pickup shows how closely the widget-maker ranking was being watched.
First-order effects
- RockYou! displaces Slide as the number-one Facebook app developer by users, taking the crown Slide had held since at least August with Top Friends.
- Slide now faces pressure to defend its installed base through further app acquisitions or new releases rather than resting on Top Friends' early lead.
Second-order effects
- The two dominant widget shops will keep buying smaller apps to hold rank — Slide's $60k Favorite Peeps deal set the template, and the overtaking raises the price of staying ahead.
- Smaller Facebook developers are squeezed into sell-or-stall decisions, since the top slots by user count are effectively owned by just two companies.
Third-order effects
- If user-count concentration holds, Facebook's app economy consolidates around a handful of widget makers whose scale determines which apps reach the platform's viral channels first.
- A platform whose distribution rewards two incumbents invites both regulator-adjacent scrutiny of its growth mechanics and dependence risk for developers building entirely inside one company's rules.
The trend: Third-party app platforms are consolidating fast, with a couple of well-funded widget shops racing each other — and buying their way up rankings — to control the bulk of user attention.