If you play Playfish’s Pet Society, you may have noticed a link in the sidebar for the “Pet Society Greetings Card Competition“.

Here is the letter that was posted on the Pet Society Forum from the Mayor of Pet Society introducing the competition:

Dear villagers,

As part of our Pet Society holiday season celebrations, I thought it might be fun to create our own greetings cards to celebrate together… but not just any cards, oh no, I’d like YOU to decide how they should look!

Here’s what I had in mind. You draw a fun picture for a greetings card and upload it onto our specially made website. Let’s focus on everything that’s fun about the holiday season — snowball fights, presents, great food… but with a Pet Society twist. (more…)

Have you noticed that some Facebook applications let you “try before you buy”? In other words, these applications allow you try them out before you have to give them access to your profile.

The usual flow for adding a new application in Facebook goes something like this: You find an application, you click on “Go to Application” and then you’re asked to give the application access to your profile. Once you click on the “Allow” link, you’ve given the application permission to access your profile information, the application has been added to your application list and you’re taken to the application dashboard or main page. Some applications, however, take you directly to the application dashboard or main page and you are only asked to give the application permission to access your profile if you wish to engage in some action with that application. (more…)

There is some debate as to whether or not cross-promotion is an effective technique for acquiring new users. Bret on Social Games asked the question “Does Cross-Promoting a Game Work?” back in June and came to the conclusion that it really depends and the cross-promotion strategy that is employed. (more…)

In a previous post, we discussed using Calls To Action (CTA’s) within notifications, however, some application developers are using CTA’s in other ways within their applications. Matt Davies of Fadtastic defines a CTA as:

“…a section of text which tells the user to do something. For example…the famous ‘click here’.”

Used within Facebook applications, CTA’s are small additions that may very well have a big impact on application adoption and user retention because, as you’ll see, some of the most successful applications on Facebook are using CTA’s.

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Developing a successful Facebook application isn’t an easy task. If you’re just getting started or you’re trying to figure out what it takes to create a successful application, you’ll find the list of resources below very helpful.

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The previous posts in this series looked at Gifting and Challenges and how they can be used to acquire new users. This is the third and final post in this series and we’ll be taking a look at how to use Notifications in your Facebook Applications.

Notifications can help remind your users to re-engage with your applications, however, as you’ll see below, one type of notification has the unique advantage of exposing your application to new users even if they aren’t currently using your application.

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