Around 12:30PM today, people in the room stopped working to share some thoughts and tips:

• Virality first, usefulness second: When one group showed Siqi their first idea, Siqi suggested virality should be the focus and usefulness second. So the group moved on to another idea. If the app is useful to the user, great! But the app does not encourage the user invite others, its not going anywhere.
• Secret sauce is in the measurement: Measurement functionality is more valuable than what your application does. Siqi recommended building in measurement functionality from the beginning. Developers must be able to track how users are responding to items such as newsfeeds and invitations.
• A or B?: How do you know if your changes are improving your application, user experience, virality, etc? Build functionality to allow one set of users to see/experience A, while another set see B. For example, show invitation A that says, “Please add this application” and show invitation B that says, “I would like you to add this application.” Measure what works, what doesn’t. And keep testing.
• Seamless Experience: Users are more likely to be comfortable using your application if your UI looks integrated with the Facebook’s colors, fonts, etc. You can find the Facebook CSS rules here on Elsie’s post at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7953767155
• What’s your name again?: Does your application have a name that’s hard to remember? The group building an app called “Social Match” got this advice from Siqi and changed their app name to Matchtastic.

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