Lessons from the Stanford Facebook apps class

I attended the final presentation for the Stanford Facebook apps class last night. It was a great event. There were a ton of really practical learnings that the students found out during the 10 weeks they worked on their apps. And the great thing was that there were enough projects (about 25) that you'd see the recurring themes come up on different teams, further validating.

Here are the top learnings:

1. Simplicity rules
2. Be blunt with what you want the users to do; most will do it
3. Focus on encouraging positive, lightweight communications between users
   
4. Require users to invite their friends to force virality
5. Make default decisions for users (you can allow them to customize but most won't)
6. Keep the feedback loops short. Give the user some value, then ask for some value in return.
7. Use a level-up system with unlocked functionality to encourage engagement.