Behavior change Facebook Applications are currently a disaster. I spent the past 4 months building Facebook apps, and in the process I did a survey of all behavior change Facebook apps, looking for what works and what doesn’t.

Turns out there isn’t a single successful behavior change Facebook app. Read on to find out why and what I think can be done about it:

An Ideal Platform

Facebook should be an ideal platform for building applications that are very powerful for helping people change their behavior for the better. The reasons are outlined by Dr. BJ Fogg, founder and director of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, in his paper on Mass Interpersonal Persuasion.

In particular I would point out that Facebook applications can:

1. Easily leverage social motivators, one of the more powerful motivators for humans. More than half of the US population is on Facebook. So an app can easily access a persons social support network.

2. Use Facebook as a Trigger. Half of Facebook users are on Facebook every day. That makes Facebook a powerful habit that you can attach new habits to.

Survey of Behavior Change Facebook Applications

Below are two ways to review my list of 130 behavior change facebook apps. I prepared this list in February of 2010 by searching all apps for words like “goal”, “exercise”, “weight loss”, and so on. So it’s certainly not complete, but I feel it’s fairly comprehensive.

Click on this graphic to see a complete chart showing the average monthly usage of the 130 behavior change apps:

For a complete list with descriptions and links to each app, visit the Google doc here.

Behavior Change Apps Doing Poorly

Notice only 2 of these apps have more than 10 thousand monthly average users. By comparison the top Facebook app, Farmville, has over 80 MILLION monthly average users. Even the thousandth most popular Facebook app has over 75 thousand monthly average users.

Clearly behavior change apps are not doing very well on Facebook. It could be that Facebook is just not the right platform for behavior change or personal development. Maybe it’s just an entertainment and socializing platform. I don’t think that’s the case. I think there are 5 reasons we haven’t seen success yet:

5 Reason Facebook Behavior Change Apps Aren’t Working

From what I’ve seen, all the apps I reviewed make all 5 of these mistakes. Those that are doing better tend to be doing a bit better with points 4 and 5.

1. Overemphasizing Motivation

According to the Fogg Behavior Model, three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior change to occur: Motivation, Ability and Trigger. Dr. Fogg has pointed out that a common mistake is to overemphasize motivation, with little regard to the user’s ability to perform the ability, or arranging triggers for the desired behavior. I found this to be commonly true in the behavior change Facebook apps  as well.

2. Ignoring Ability

If you’ve provided someone with incredible motivation to do something, but they can’t figure out HOW to do it, you’re essentially throwing them against a brick wall of disappointment and frustration. Behavior Change apps typically take on very difficult behaviors without adequately helping the user become ABLE to perform the desired outcome easily. Solutions include providing instruction through the app, guiding users to keep researching strategies outside the app, or developing apps targeting very focused behavior changes where ability can be more readily fostered.

3. Ignoring Triggers

If you are strongly motivated to do something, and have the ability to do it, you can still find weeks and months slip by without actually doing it. According to the Fogg Behavior Model, you also need effective triggers that remind you to do the behavior when you CAN actually do it. Facebook apps actually do frequently use triggers, just not effective ones for challenging behavior changes. They may send email reminders or take advantage of communication channels within Facebook itself (app news, counters, messages, stream posts). However these triggers rarely happen at a time when the user can actually DO the new behavior. To really be successful, apps need to help users set up triggers at the right time. For example, users might configure apps to send Facebook text messages during a user’s lunch break reminding them to eat something fresh. Or an app might offer a motivational printout to post on the mirror reminding the user to exercise first thing in the morning.

4. Ignoring Facebook  Design Patterns

Facebook (and Social networks  in general) are unique design environments and they’re changing all the time. It’s very hard to predict what interactive design strategies will work without trying them out. Too many apps strike out on their own with brand new interaction patterns, or patterns that work in other environments, like traditional websites or software. They are then surprised and disappointed that their app does not engage users. It’s very important to begin by modeling (if not outright imitating) existing Facebook interaction models, and then systematically testing new directions.

5. Ignoring Facebook Viral Best Practices

Apps that have seen rapid viral growth are aggressively using viral design patterns, creating a tight viral loop that all users enter as soon as they engage the app. Casually leveraging viral channels will achieve very limited growth no matter how powerful the behavior change features are. It’s necessary to study the best strategies, track metrics and continuously hone the efficiency of the viral loop for an app to grow large through virality.

Opportunities

Each of these current short-comings represent an opportunity for developers to break away from the pack. It’s not clear yet how many of these errors need to be corrected, and how well, to create a behavior change Facebook App that is really successful. I look forward to seeing emerging apps that start getting these things right!

This blog post represents a change in focus for the GoalTribe blog. I’m going to begin focusing more on the science and technology of behavior change, helping developers of behavior change, goal achievement, and personal development software figure out how to make their software as effective as possible. I’ll do reviews of existing sites, software, widgets and apps, do interviews, and explore research on behavior change, personal development and goal achievement best practices.

I expect that individuals will continue to find the blog a great source of the best research-based strategies and technologies for improving their lives, their communities and the world.

Any questions, comments, additions? Please leave a comment.