Darby Sieben -

Do you like to share your opinion? If so – launched today is the $100 a day free gas card giveaway from the YellowPages.ca Facebook Application – see full contest details.

Since the launch of this application, we have seen a growing numbers of users from across Canada share their opinions on restaurants, bars, dentists, health spas and this is a way to say thanks for those users to keep sharing their opinion with friends and family.

On a personal note, I appreciate that my blog has been very quiet in the last couple of months and for everybody who emailed me asking me what’s up – thanks for emails and your concern.

Besides being extremely busy in my position of Director of Online Services for Yellow Pages Group, I also made a move from Toronto to Calgary. Although the transition went extremely smooth, it is quite a ride to pick up your life and move over 3000 km’s.

Anyway, I will be regularly contributing again, with more of a focus on what is being launched by the YellowPages.ca Labs Development Team as we continue to produce some great work in helping Canadians buyers connect with sellers.

Popularity: 2% [?]

As many of you know – my YP Labs team launched the YellowPages.ca Facebook Application back in May. I did a post on the television coverage by CTV – check it out.

So what is the determining success in developing a facebook application? In the facebook world it really comes down to the number of installs of the application and more importantly the number of daily active users. At the bottom of this post, I will share some numbers on local search applications in facebook.

Before I get into small application numbers, I want to highlight a feature about the YellowPages.ca application – building your own lists to share with friends and then map your lists. This application allows a user to create lists for private, semi-public and public on pretty much any topic. Here are some public user created lists:

Favorite Restaurants in Calgary – Map List.
Favorite Sports Stores in Montreal – Map List.
Favorite Toronto Restaurants – Map List.
Great Restaurants in Port Perry – Map List.
Places to Eat in Ottawa – Map List.

Some interesting lists, including one for my favorite places to eat in Ottawa.

Back to numbers of successful application usage. I grabbed these numbers from Adonomics.com, which aggregates usage on facebook applications. Here are some stats regarding application usage on facebook. Numbers are as of today.

The most successful application, in terms of installs is SuperWall with just under 43M installs and a daily active usage of 2%.

Funwall has the most active users at 1.8M from a total install base of 36.5M and a daily active usage of 5%.

Scrabulous (now being sued by Hasbro) has 3.9M installs and daily active usage of 506K or 13%.

So what about local search applications? First, from an expectation perspective, they are not even close to the above numbers. Facebook is still, at its core, a platform of entertainment. However, it is interesting to see how some of the local search player applications fair-out:

Yell Socialiser (UK) – 500 installs, 2 daily active users (0%)
Praize’n'raze (CDN and US) – 950 installs, 57 daily active users (6%)
YellowPages.ca (CDN) – 667 installs, 40 daily active users (6%)
Local Picks (Global) – 1.1M installs, 3349 daily active users (0%)
Lolodex (US) – 2800 installs, 15 daily active users (0%)

Popularity: 53% [?]

Remember Friendster? One of those early social networking sites. Well as of this week, they have made a couple of key announcements that could help bring friendster.com from the depths of the Canadian Internet space to – perhaps a competitor to facebook? Well – let’s not get carried away, but they have announced opening up a developer network as well as integrating with OpenSocial – both positive steps in the right direction, however, probably a little late – at least in the Canadian market. For the full story please read, Friendster developer platform goes live with over 180 apps.

From a local business perspective – your best bet is still facebook.com as a vehicle to communicate with your customers and friends. With the launch of facebook’s business solutions – there is a very viable solution for local businesses to get involved in the social space.

However, what about friendster? You know, at one point, they had a great service but what they are doing now is reactive not proactive. They, like myspace, are in reactionary mode to facebook and this is a touch position for any business to be in.

Anyway, as a FYI – here is a 12-month media trend comparing facebook.com, myspace.com and friendster.com in Canada – the graph speaks for itself as to what Canadians are using and where local businesses in Canada need to be.

Popularity: 9% [?]