The horses are out of the gate. so to speak, and we have a report on the most popular applications being used on Facebook, as enabled by Facebook's new platform technology. Steve O'Hear of ZDNet has a post about the
five most popular applications.
- iLike integrates the music social network and recommendation service into your profile (see my previous coverage of iLike). Adding music-based social networking to Facebook makes perfect sense, and is something they could have easily done themselves. That’s what makes the company’s Platform strategy so intriguing. Mike Arrington (over at TechCrunch) also notes the omission of Last.fm which is arguably the best-of-breed of music-based social networks.
- Horoscopes (by RockYou!) adds twice-weeky horoscope readings to your profile.
- The Compass (by the Washington Post) involves taking a survey that determines your political compass. The results are then displayed on your profile. It’s a fun idea, but hardly qualifies as an ‘application’.
- Games adds multiplayer web-based games to Facebook: “Play games and meet new people in your networks! Add the Games application to get access to a constantly changing selection of fun multi-player games, all right in your browser.” Pretty obvious but neat idea that has the potential to take traffic away from dedicated web-based gaming social networks. If the games are any good that is.
- Picnik adds basic photo editing functionality to Facebook. Considering that the social network has been reported as the largest photo-sharing site on the web, giving users the ability to re-size, crop, and enhance their photos without leaving the site is a smart move. Although again, it seems like the kind of thing Facebook should have done themselves.
The social gaming one is interesting. I wonder if that is popular with both men and women.
I'm also seeing my own friends on Facebook sign up for
Last.FM and
Digg.com plugins. Last.FM is a social music site that shares with your friends what music you're listening to, despite what music player you're using (Windows Media Player, etc).
Tags:
Facebook,
Social Technology,
Social Media,
HP,
HP Labs
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