Top 10 Facebook Apps: Extension
The final installment in our look at the top 50 Facebook apps will look at 10 apps for extension. These apps extend Facebook's core functionality to improve upon existing features (for the most part). This was the hardest list to create because there is probably more overlap in this category than any of the others, which meant excluding a lot of apps. This is a completely subjective list, so not everyone will agree with our picks and I encourage you to debate them in the comments.
This post is the last in a 5-part series that has identified our picks for the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work, Part 2: Play, Part 3: Media, and Part 4: Utility as well.
Extended Info
Extended Info is the perfect app to start off this list -- it even uses the word extended in the title! This app, which won the F8 Hackathon contest, allows you to tell the world more about yourself by adding custom profile fields such as activities, interests, favorite coffee shops, or whatever you can think of. With Extended Info your profile also supports videos, images, MP3 files, and colored text.
SuperPoke!
Who wants to poke someone when you can pinch them instead? SuperPoke! extends the built in poking application on Facebook by allowing you choose from an extensive list of additional actions. What sets SuperPoke! apart from other poking apps, is that you can choose to dole out new pokes, rather than just adding new forms of poking to your own profile. It would be great, though, if like the popular X Me app, you could define your own original poke styles.
Advanced Wall
The Advanced Wall app takes the Facebook wall to new levels by adding support for styled text, images, videos, and flash. This is all made possible through a nice wysiwyg editor. Some people might argue that this type of app causes the "MySpacification" of Facebook and should be shunned. But millions of people disagree, having already installed this app and others like it.
Top Friends
Top Friends is by far the most popular third-party application on Facebook, and with good reason: it's actually pretty useful. I have about 150 friends on Facebook, but I only regularly interact with a handful of those. Top Friends lets you create a box on your profile of your 32 favorite contacts for quick access. Rather than having to slog through your entire list of friends to find the buddy whose profile you're after, you can just click once after making him or her a Top Friend.
Live Blog
Live Blog replaces Facebook's notes app with a full blog that is displayed on your profile. It has support for YouTube vidoes and HTML, and includes commenting. Coming soon: RSS/Atom feeds, draft and preview functions, and built-in image upload.
Friend Stats
Friend Stats brings Facebook's network stats closer to home by showing you what your friends are into. It's a pretty interesting way to learn about your group of friends or coworkers and gives you a ton of statistics culled from their profiles including age, sex, political leaning, who writes the most notes, has the most wall posts, has held the most jobs, and a lot of other interesting facts. For example, among my friends, the most popular movie is "Boondock Saints" and the most popular TV show is "Family Guy."
Widgets
Like Advanced Wall, many people feel the Widgets app from Widgetbox contributes to the "MySpacification" of Facebook. And they may have a point. Widgets allows users to add any of the more than 10,000 Widgetbox widgets to their Facebook profile -- just like MySpace -- but thankfully, it doesn't let users get around the no autoplay rule Facebook imposes on Flash widgets. Many of the widgets available in this app let you add functionality from outside apps that have yet to make the jump to Facebook, and so this application will have a use for many people.
Graffiti
Graffiti is the most popular of the Facebook drawing apps. It's not the most advanced, but I think it is the easiest to get the hang of. And you can actually make some pretty impressive art with it if you A) have some modicum of talent and B) have the patience to do it (see below for an example). Graffiti places a simple drawing app on your profile that lets your friends leave you drawn obscenities (or works of art -- whatever they fancy).
van Gogh's "Starry Night" reproduced in Facebook.
Moodsic
There are a number of Facebook apps for displaying your mood (an extension of the built-in status app) and when I started I honestly didn't think I would pick this one. But Moodsic is one of the more novel of the mood apps. With Moodsic, you set you mood and the app matches how you feel with songs from popular artists. Moodsic got serious points for matching my mood of "somewhat sleepy" with "The Weight" by The Band -- a classic. Moodsic is also a monetized app -- you and your friends can purchase the music you're listening to. Some annoying bits: You can only play tracks once, and if you skip too many it disables skipping (similar to Pandora, in that respect).
I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, and "No!", was all he said.
--The Band
iGift
This was a tough one to choose. Both of the two top gifting applications on Facebook, which let you send Facebook-style gift icons for free, have the same number of gifts and more or less identical interfaces and features. In the end iGift won out for two reason: it has marginally better artwork than its chief rival, and it is categorized, making it easier to find the perfect gift for any occasion (or at least any occasion where sending a thumbnail image of a hot dog is appropriate).
Conclusion
Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for extension. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. Let the debate begin!
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i understand the need to profile these different apps. but is anyone suffering from overload here? i'm getting sick of my friends adding this no good apps and then subsequently removing them 2 days later once they realize how much they suck.
First of all, let me say that I made Free Gifts, so I am biased of course, and I enjoy good competition and have talked to the iGift creators many times. However, in no way do I think iGift is better than Free Gifts, especially for those reasons you mentioned.
"Marginally better artwork" - The majority of iGifts artwork is taken from iStockPhoto, and I don't know if he purchased the extended license but if he didn't it is technically illegal. All of the gifts on Free Gifts are rendered specifically for the application, excluding the first couple which were there for testing, but have no license attached. Also notice how the quality of the images on iGift's selection screen are very low, the backgrounds aren't even 100% white!
"Categorized" - The reason I don't categorize is because many of the gifts are random, which makes it nearly impossible to correctly categorize them. The five categories on iGift are FAR from descriptive, "fun"... come on!
Free Gifts has 20 more gifts than iGift, and at least one new gift is added every day! Support is much quicker and better on Free Gifts, check our review walls and the super long FAQ on Free Gifts. The iGift interface is much less "slick" than Free Gifts... compare the paging on the gift selection screens, one is instant, one reloads the page, losing everything you may have typed! As for additional features, Free Gifts has statistics, gift-to-gift, and extra gift options.
That's my "extended" opinion on the matter.
Z :)
Hi Zach,
When I checked last night it seemed both apps had 134 gifts -- but maybe I counted wrong (I studied in English in college ;)).
Thanks for the reply. That sort of disagreement and debate is what I was hoping these lists would cause. Free Gifts, it should be mentioned, is far bigger than iGift (by nearly 3.8 million users).
I think Graffiti is pretty damn slick, and it was one of the first apps to launch. I'm surprised nobody has bought them yet.
@Dan: Agreed. They were one of the two apps I bet on as the next Facebook acquisitions (this post).
Josh - Yeah on second thought I may not have 20 more, I was counting my limited edition gifts (which are not visible anymore, but another feature I have) in the count, so maybe 10-15 more.
Dan - Why would they want to sell?
"Rather than having to slog through your entire list of friends to find the buddy whose profile you're after, you can just click once after making him or her a Top Friend."
If you have keyboard functionality on your machine, the "search" feature is pretty damn useful for this sort of thing. Top Friends have never been about finding buddies fast - searching is far quicker than slogging through even 16 top friends. In my opinion, all this feature does is create drama and divisions.
That's my attack - I don't think this should be on a top list. I like your attitude though. Blog on!
-Noa
I think these apps are all tacky, badly designed, and uninteresting. I haven't really seen any apps I like for facebook yet. Some passable ones are:
friend wheel
last.fm plus
touchgraph photos