Facebook Mobile Apps Platform Sees 60 Million Users per month

Facebook’s mobile apps platform, launched back in October 2011, has been growing rapidly over the past three months.

Carl Sjogreen, Facebook Director of Product Management, revealed at Inside Social App’s conference that 60 million people per month have engaged with apps via the mobile web platform since the launch in October 2011, according to Inside Facebook’s live blog of the event. This demonstrates both the huge growth in mobile and apps, an area that Sjogreen recognises the importance of:

“‘Overall we have 845 million users visit Facebook every month, over half on a mobile device. So we are taking all communication channels that made the web platform what it is and brought it to mobile. I think it’s the least understood aspect of what we do and the most underappreciated opportunity. This is where lots of people are engaging on Facebook.’”

With more and more people using Facebook on the go, and engaging with apps, especially games such as Farmville and Words with Friends, it seems likely that how people use social apps will evolve, as Sjogreen made reference to when discussing how Open Graph will impact on the user experience:

“‘ As someone who likes a game, I want to express that activtiy to my friends, but I don’t need to be interrupted every time to share that activity. With Open Graph there’s an opportunity to figure out what are the stories people want to share.”‘

Sjogreen said that at Facebook they’ll look at success in terms of high quality mobile apps that see dramatic growth as a result of Facebook. So although 60 million is just a fraction of the over 422 million Facebook mobile users, it’s a massive amount of growth in just over three months, one Facebook will no doubt be hoping to build on.