A few weeks back Facebook opened its doors to third-party developers to make applications that would integrate with its new f8 platform. There are now almost 1100 applications floating around for users to add to their profiles. Most of these apps are complete garbage, but a few are worth adding to your profile. Since I spend a scary amount of time on that website it would be remiss of me if I didn’t tell you about the apps which I’ve grown especially fond of.
Before diving into the list let me explain it a little further. These apps aren’t necessarily the best Facebook applications available. I haven’t tried them all, but these are my favorites of the ones I’ve tried. They’re also not the most popular apps out there, but I figure that’s all the more reason to give them a little love. So here they are, in no particular order.
Google Reader Shared Items – If you don’t know what Google reader is you should click here and educate yourself. I currently subscribe to 72 feeds in my Google reader. One of my favorite features in Google reader is the ability to share my favorite posts from those feeds with the rest of the world. Now I can have my most recent shared items show up on my Facebook profile. In other words, now people might actually know I’m sharing items in the first place. EDIT: This application is now called Feedheads. [Add this application]
Last.fm Music – There are currently six different Last.fm applications for Facebook. The one I’m talking about is the one actually made by the good people at Last.fm. This app is so much better than iLike, but because iLike was around at the launch of the new Facebook platform and this app wasn’t you don’t see as many people using it. Why so much better? Two reasons. First, this app plays entire songs instead of just clips. It creates a “radio station” of songs based on the stuff you like. Second, if you have an account with Last.fm and the software they provide running on your computer you can also show people the songs you’ve been listening to in iTunes. [Add this application]
YouTube Badge – I use the Facebook-made video application for my own videos because I like having the ability to tag my friends in those videos. But what about my YouTube favorites? How can I make those available to my profile visitors? Don’t worry, the YouTube Badge has taken care of it. You’re not limited to showing a list of your favorites either. You can add videos based on a certain tag or playlist. You can also show the featured or popular videos on YouTube. If you’re not into uploaded your own videos both on YouTube and on Facebook you can use this app to display your personal YouTube video collection as well. Not only is it functional but it looks great. It displays a very clean looking thumbnail quilt in your profile. [Add this application] (The maker of this app has also made a similar application for Flickr photos.)
Quotes – There are actually two Facebook apps with this name. I’m referring to the one by Jay Freeman. There’s always been a section in the Facebook profile for your favorite quotes, but this app will let you tag your friends’ quotes. Now you can let the whole world know when your friend said something stupid the same way tagging photos let the whole world see them doing something stupid. The main thing I like about this app over the other one is that I don’t need the approval of the person I’m quoting to tag them. It’s just like with Facebook photos. If they don’t want to be tagged they can remove it. Personally, I’m surprised quote tagging wasn’t built into the standard Facebook architecture long ago. [Add this application]
My Profiles – I’m a Web 2.0 junkie. I have accounts with all sorts of different services like Google, Bebo, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm and Wordpress, just to name a few. Until now the only way to put a link to my different profiles was in the link section where I couldn’t define what each link was or in the about section which didn’t allow me to make an actual hyperlink. But now there’s an app that lets us list all of our various accounts in an organized little box on your profile. The logo of the service will appear next to the link you create. If the one you want isn’t listed you can tell the developer and he’ll add it or you can just use the custom field. There are a couple other variants of this app (My Links, Web Presence) but they’re each a little sloppier than My Profiles. [Add this application]
I also use some of the more popular apps like Book Reviews, Causes, Enemies, Free Gifts and Movies, so if I were to make a top ten list those would be the other five. But who wants to read about an app that most Facebook users have already tried out?
One app that I’ve just recently added that I love but haven’t yet found a use for yet is Photos2RSS. Now, just like Flickr, we can syndicate our Facebook photos. This app gets an honorable mention nod from me.
If you’re part of the crowd that doesn’t like these new applications and you wish Facebook would just go back to the way things used to be I have two things to tell you. First, it’s not going to happen. But second, you should hang in there for just a little while longer. FaceReviews.com, a site that reviews Facebook apps, had some wise words on that topic:
Ultimately the Facebook developer community will create very useful applications that go beyond the lightweight programs that currently are dominating the first phase of applications that we are seeing on Facebook. The Facebook f8 platform represents a major tide shift in the way that applications can be leveraged upon a community platform & ecosystem. More robust applications will arrive, and this will ultimately make the Facebook user experience much better, engaging and useful.
This makes sense when you think about it. After all, with the exception of the apps made available at the launch of f8, all of these apps were made in only a couple of weeks. The “more robust applications” no doubt are more complicated and therefore take more time to code. They have to be better than the majority of the junk being put onto Facebook right now.
One more thing about Facebook applications that needs to be said. There are currently nine different apps that will give you a daily Bible verse on your profile. Nine! Now listen, I love Jesus and all, but give me a break.
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