Facebook has recently updated their application metrics measurements from Daily Active Users (DAU) to Monthly Active Users (MAU).
This change has been really enlightening in respect to user engagement. For Status Competition, the application I developed with the help of Kim Vallee, here are the latest numbers:
We are quite impressed with our results! Before, the DAU could fluctuate between 200 and 400 depending on the day of the week. Note that I have 164 friends that are users of the application. Because of this, I viewed the DAU counts with a grain of salt. I agree with Facebook’s move as the MAU gives a much clearer picture of user engagement.
At 2,895 MAU out of 7,005 users, we learn that 41% of our users use the application at least once a month. Keep in mind that this has been reached with near zero advertising. We launched the application in January.
In the last months, we gained an average of 1,000 net users per month. Facebook Insights’ statistics tell us that we had 2,499 MAU a month ago. Because we had about 6,000 users at that time, it translates to 42%. Since the MAU fluctuates on a daily basis, our user engagement rate seems to be pretty stable at about 40%.
I can only hope that with our future (and long overdue) update, things will get even better.