Following the previous post about Network Effects I wanted to discuss App Addictiveness.
Huge Social Apps
If you’re a huge Web2 social app, attention is your life-blood. Your cash flow comes from capturing attention and selling it to advertisers. It’s in your interest to capture as much attention as possible, so you can sell as many ads as possible. The incentives lead you to try to hold maximum eyeballs.
How do well-established apps maximize attention? I think there are a couple of ways. 1. If you can afford it, you might hire neuro-scientists or growth hackers that have experience in this domain. 2. You collect data from your users and A/B test until you reach the optimal results.
Habit Forming Loop
There’s a great book that breaks down how apps get us hooked. It’s written by Nir Eyal and it’s called called “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” Habits keep the attention captured and keep the eyeballs coming back.
The users of apps are taken through loops designed to form habits. There are 4 steps in the loop:
- Trigger
- Action
- Variable reward
- Investment
Step 1: Trigger
The trigger is a cue - it could be audio, visual, or haptic. A prime example is smartphone notifications.
Step 2: Action
The action is what you do after receiving the trigger. For smartphone notifications you will take action to open an app.
Step 3: Variable Reward
The variable reward is a crucial step for getting hooked. Each time the action is done, there needs to be different result. Sometimes the result is more enticing. Think: slot machine. When you hit the jackpot it feels really good, and your brain wants you to repeat the action to see if it happens again.
Step 4: Investment
The last step is for the user to put some data back into the app. The investment cannot be transferred to other apps, and makes the app more sticky. The new data often leads to more triggers that repeat the loop. A good example is posting a comment.
Small Social Apps
What if you’re a small social media app? Small social apps probably can’t afford to hire neurons-scientists. But they can learn a few things from the big guys.
I’d call most Hive apps small. They have less than 10,000 active users. Hive apps are remarkable in that they don’t depend on advertisements for survival. So manipulating the users into paying as much attention as possible isn’t really their goal. I think this make Hive apps more humane. But it also makes them suck at retention, because, unfortunately other apps are competing desperately for attention.
Let’s use PeakD as an example to walkthrough the habit-forming loop and brainstorm idea for each step.
Step 1: Trigger
If I’m not on PeakD I won’t be hooked unless there’s something to tell me to come back. My most effective triggers right now are FRIDAY Discord notifications. One idea is for PeaKD to to recommend new users to register with FRIDAY to receive those notifications.
Another very effective trigger would be mobile app notifications. This is only possible through iOS/Android apps. Interestingly, other platforms really push you to use their mobile app instead of the mobile web site. Probably because the apps are much better at getting you hooked and capturing your attention.
Step 2: Action
The actions on PeakD are straightforward. When you see a notification indicating someone replied to your blog or comment, you click the link to go read it.
Step 3: Variable Reward
The content of comments is variable. It could range from 1 word to an essay with photos. Until you open up PeakD you don’t know what you’re going to get.
How would you make it a more juicy reward? Maybe also show some recommendations for similar posts and authors.
Or show you that you are 3 comments away from completing your daily comment quest (gamification).
Step 4: Investment
Investment is straightforward, too. PeakD users upvote, comment, follow others. Each of these is some data fed into the network.
And any one of these inputs could lead to more triggers. For example you could receive a reply to your new comment. The blog you followed could follow you back.
Closing the Habit-Forming Loop
After going through this loop a dozen times, you’ll form habits of check Discord for FRIDAY notifications or directly checking PeakD for notifications.
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Respectfully,
Cleanthes
[This is HiveBloPoMo-2022-Post5]