Chris Barr

Facebook Apps

Saturday, February 23, 2008

I love the idea of Facebook apps, they let developers get known by nearly the entire Facebook community for their hard work, and they allow people to even further the social networking experience. There's a lot of great apps out there that are actually very useful, fun, and promote a great user experience.

The problem with Facebook apps is the users, and how Facebook deals with them. For the majority of the apps out there, when you add it you must invite at least 20 friends! For some reason the majority of users are fine with this, but lets call it what it is - spam! Unless you actually want an app, or legitimately think a friend of yours would like an app you've found, there is no reason whatsoever to have invites for an app, let alone forced or required invitations!

Now this problem lies with the developer of the application. They are the ones who choose to force you to invite 20 friends to add an app. This is purely an ego thing for them I'm sure - "Look how many people have installed my app!" According to ReadWriteWeb, Facebook will soon be punishing stupid applications, and rewarding the good ones. They determine stupid apps as ones that serve no purpose, spam the users, and no one actually uses - meaning people are just blindly accepting app invites.

Another completely separate problem are the people who just blindly accept every app they get an invite to. People like this end up with a ridiculous looking profile that almost rivals MySpace. Take a look at the picture to the left, this is one of my Facebook friends who has been adding apps like crazy! She has 71 applications installed!

This included 4, count em, 4 separate walls that all do the same thing, an app displaying their loyalty to Starbucks and what her favorite drink is, and the ability for your friends to let you know if they think you're hot or not. There reaches a point when you have unused and empty app containers, your profile picture appears 8 times on your own profile, and your finger becomes tired form using the scroll wheel, that you need to re-think how you use Facebook.