Our list today will look at the top 10 apps for utility. These are apps that are in some way useful. This was a pretty broad list, and probably took us the longest to cut down to a top ten. As a result, we were unfortunately forced to leave off a lot of good 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 fourth in a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work, Part 2: Play, and Part 3: Media, as well.
Scrawl Pad adds an editable text box to your profile that any of your friends can edit. While that makes it marginally less useful (since your friends can change anything it says, it's probably not suitable for important notes), it is still useful for sharing quick information with friends or coworkers about meetings or memos, etc. It blends very well into your profile and almost feels as if it should have been there all along.
The official Mobile app from Facebook adds Facebook functionality to your mobile phone. View and upload photos directly from your camera phone, or send and receive messages, notes, pokes, and Wall posts using text messages. The mobile application also includes a phone book that lets you look up your friend's contact info.
HTML Box is an app that lets you add pretty much anything to your Facebook profile. You still can't get around the no autoplay rule that Facebook has imposed on developers, but with HTML Box you could add almost any photo, video, text, or flash animation/application you can think of. In a way, HTML Box lets anyone have their own custom Facebook app running on their profile (i.e., this is perfect for advertising your website or business via your profile!).
ChipIn is how you raise money on Facebook. Using the ChipIn application you can solicit funds from your friends for an event or collection and keep track of everyone's donation. No one actually gets charged until you reach your goal. [Austin from ChipIn tells me that this is no longer the case, and funds are now added immediately after "chipping in." -- Ed.] Trying to raise $100 for Bob's birthday party at the office? Install ChipIn, set $100 as your fundraising goal, and ask 20 co-workers to each chip in five bucks. The widget does the rest for you, collecting funds using PayPal and even keeping track of how far you are from your goal with a visual status indicator.
NewsCloud is a social news application for Facebook. The NewsCloud app lets you submit, read, comment, and vote on stories from within your Facebook account. It also supports videos from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. NewsCloud users can form and join "clouds" (groups) that focus on a specific topic of news, and can access Facebook's built in share utility to easily share stories with their friends.
my RSS is a simple RSS reader for Facebook. However, it's not really the greatest way to consume RSS feeds, because if you subscribe to multiple full text feeds it just displays them all one after the other on a single page. I also couldn't quite get the feeds I subscribed to to display properly on my profile. Hopefully the developers of my RSS will continue to work on it and improve on the UI because a full fledged RSS reader inside Facebook is a very useful application. Even not quite fully cooked, this was the best RSS reader I could find on Facebook.
Files, an application by online file storage company Box.net, allows Facebook users to share files from their profile. Each user gets 1GB of free space and their files are displayed in a box on their profile for anyone to download. The application is a snap to use, but I really wish there was a way to restrict files to certain friends or at least certain groups of people.
There's really no denying that Carpool is a useful app, and one that will only get more useful as people join. Carpool does just what it sounds like it does: it helps people arrange rides together. If you need a ride home from school or what to arrange a carpool to and from work, this app can help you find like minded people in your area. The developers are also working on making carpooling safer by helping you find rides with friends, or friends of friends who at least aren't total strangers.
Price Tracker is a useful little app for Amazon addicts like myself. The application keeps track of the price history for items on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk and notifies you when the price changes on an item you are tracking. The idea is that because the price of many items on Amazon changes rather frequently, by monitoring them with Price Tracker you can assure yourself you won't pay top dollar if you don't have to.
What's for dinner? Cookbook, a social recipe sharing app for Facebook, makes that a much easier question to answer. Browse, create, and share recipes, and see what your friends are cooking. Cookbook has 1588 recipes across eight categories as I write this, ensuring that you will never go hungry.
Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for utility. 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. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 5 of our list. Let the debate begin!
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I think the 4cast Weather App falls into this category.
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2422896237
Posted by: Patrick | July 19, 2007 11:48 AMNot a Facebook app per se, but closely tied to it: http://appaholic.com
Watch the little apps grow into giant hulking behemoths!
Posted by: Jesse | July 19, 2007 4:54 PMIf you don't feel like cooking, you can try our Eating app to find and review restaurants:
Posted by: Justin Chen | July 19, 2007 5:09 PMhttp://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2419027514&b
Check out Fosimo - Facebook desktop app:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2484926880
or here:
http://www.onecone.com/Pages/Downloads/FosimoDownload.aspx
This is a true application utility. Others listed may be useful but I'd rather call them widgets and not "apps".
Posted by: Anatoly Lubarsky | July 19, 2007 5:38 PMDoes anyone else remember when the facebook wall was what scrawlpad is now? Funny how things come full circle.
Posted by: anamexis | July 19, 2007 5:41 PMI'll add my bit of advertising :) Poetry Shout was recently launched to provide Facebookers with a place to submit their poetry, as well as read and comment on other people's work.
Posted by: Steve | July 19, 2007 6:05 PMhttp://apps.facebook.com/poetryshout
Friends Organizer:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2382508341
Organizes friends into clusters (or using tags in web 2.0 terminology). You can get to your friends in any cluster in one click.
Posted by: Paul Young | July 19, 2007 6:34 PMI don't know how "my RSS" made the list. Both Flog and myBlog are better RSS utilities.
Posted by: eldila | July 19, 2007 6:57 PMI just launched my app a couple days ago. Its starting to grow :)
Posted by: chris | July 19, 2007 7:22 PMhttp://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2760885836&b
You guys either went out on a limb here or just picked these semi-randomly... 2 of the 10 were on our list of the biggest net losers of users in the period from July 11-17... ;)
I created this spreadsheet for you, taking the stats for only the 10 apps you have posted here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ppdNzr1q3NNdbY7oeQzAieQ&range=a1:h12&gridlines=false
Actually, this just points to how good apps just might not look successful in comparison to such huge innovations as "zombies" or "LOLcats!" in the new world order of FB...
Posted by: AppRap | July 19, 2007 8:09 PM@AppRap: Well the list is totally subjective... but I certainly went for quality over popularity. In some cases, there were apps for essentially the same thing and one might have had a million more users than the other, but I'd pick the smaller one based on functionality, features and design.
Posted by: Josh Catone | July 19, 2007 8:20 PMHow about someone's photos as an subscription RSS feed? That's pretty useful, isn't it?
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2422316440
Posted by: Aditya | July 19, 2007 8:27 PMJosh, thanks for mentioning NewsCloud in your list. I am definitely starting to see some increased activity in our app even though we haven't updated it much since launch. The app is also open source - code available on from the home page of the application.
Two other fun apps we made are :
Comedy Central Videos (new with 200 users)
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2527615336
and Daily Show News (3000+ users)
Posted by: Jeff | July 19, 2007 9:40 PMhttp://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2417657927
Those interested in search visualization may find the searchCrystal app in Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2484281058 - worth a try. searchCrystal - http://www.searchcrystal.com - lets you search and visually compare multiple engines in one place. It enables you to remix and share results from web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines as well as Flickr images or RSS feeds.
Posted by: Anselm | July 19, 2007 10:18 PMA vBulletin forum interfaced with facebook.
I like it alot.
the application is here
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2368627111
you can visit the forums here
Posted by: Paul | July 20, 2007 4:20 AMhttp://www.skewlbuoy.com/forums/fbook.php
BBC Radio Player app
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2357049935
Posted by: Dunc | July 20, 2007 5:28 AMCheck out Jobs http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=2ef3f8cc5320897be6432956cc6213dc
1300+ users and growing. The only place on Facebook to search your friends for jobs.
Thanks
Posted by: Ed | July 20, 2007 6:51 AMJosh: You should go back to the previous posts in this series and add a link to the later items. Much easier to find them all and read them all (and in the darkness bind them).
Posted by: Eric Eggertson | July 20, 2007 7:59 AMwhat about Drink? This is so easy and fun I've learned so much about drinking from my friends', friends', friends.
Posted by: drinker | July 20, 2007 9:25 AMUltimateWishlist is a gift registry. It is still in BETA mode.
The essential idea is to create a simply to easy to use wishlist that anyone can use to build a list of items they would someday like to own.
Add it here:
http://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key=76d42018e6edfeff9800595f9dd66d53
Posted by: Brad Detchevery | July 20, 2007 12:19 PMDoes someone really uses the Scrawl Pad? It´s dangerous, information can be easily changed. The Chipin apps is very funny. Facebook thought in every single aspect of our lives.
Posted by: Jose | July 20, 2007 3:12 PMI just can't live without http://apps.facebook.com/topgames/
Posted by: Peter | July 22, 2007 12:06 PMlol..
Hey Josh
Thanks for listing our app (HTML Box). We saw a noticeable jump in users after this post went live and really appreciate your support.
Thanks again
Posted by: Chris | July 23, 2007 1:48 PMA friend of mine wrote the Facebook app for Sports Illustrated. I'm biased of course, but I think it came out great!:
Posted by: Bill LaMorey | July 24, 2007 8:48 AMhttp://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2406949334
We just launched Facebook Vdopia app. Vdopia - your vdopia paradise, is for sharing your personal videos. Sharing at Vdopia is private and is as secure as an email. You can also bookmark your favorite videos from youtube, dailymotion, google videos etc. to keep all the videos you like at one place. Your friends can view your favorite videos and find videos bookmarked by you. Last but not the least you can chat with your friends and discuss while watching your favorite videos. Check out http://apps.facebook.com/ourvdopia/
Posted by: Chhavi Upadhyay | August 5, 2007 2:52 AMPlease have a look at the site, and provide feedback on how you found our app, write here if you would like to add additional features on Vdopia http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2384018198