SHARING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

In general, this disclosure describes techniques for providing a mechanism to manage referrals for applications shared over a social network service when granted permission by users of the social network service. For example, a server system receives a message including user association information and an indication of a software application, and publishes a post to a subset of users as indicated by the user association information. The server system also receives a request for a version of the software application from a second user and determines whether the post was re-shared by a third user. If the post was re-shared, the server system stores in a database of the computing system, a referral association between the third user, the second user, and the software application. If the post was not re-shared, the server system stores a referral association between the first user, the second user, and the software application.