I think a lot of users are going to appreciate this. I'm not so sure about app developers.

Rodney Rumford writes at FB app review blog FaceReviews that this will make the app developers' world a whole lot more competitive, since many apps spread largely through discovery by one friend on the profile page of another. It was via Rodney that I found this news.

So app developers are unlikely to be happy about this. Perhaps demotion of your app is better than having it be deleted?

Time to Throw a Party?

I don't think Rodney's concern will be at the top of users' minds, though. How will they (we) feel? As we read in our recent interview with an early Facebook user, which we think is pretty typical - there's a real backlash against app-overload, at least among long-time users. For some it's a backlash against Facebook apps at all!

On the other hand, many new users may appreciate the apps on the Facebook platform. Apps being hidden will presumably hinder our ability to stumble onto cool new ones. (Like this new near-Dodgeball integration into Facebook, for example.) If you, dear reader, weren't interested in finding cool new apps on the web - you probably wouldn't be reading this blog.

Maybe that's beside the point when it comes to Facebook apps though. They can be pretty annoying. I wonder how many people will move apps but still keep them and how many people will take this opportunity to delete them. I also wonder if few people will take advantage of the new "profile cleaner" and if in fact all of us just pile up detritus on these sites until we can't stand the load, we freak-out and leave.

Either way, I thought you'd appreciate reading about a way to hide Facebook apps - if only on principle!

Slide's VP of strategy and business development, Keith Rabois has confirmed that the company will concentrate on its current applications on Facebook instead of releasing new apps. This seems to be a smart move from the company since Facebook's upcoming overhaul will make things harder for developers to not only get their apps to Facebook users, but also to grow their apps. While Sillicon Alley Insider feels this means the end is near for the Facebook app "landgrab", we feel that Slide may simply be adapting to future conditions of Facebook's new platform until all the kinks are sorted out. On the other hand, this is ultimately good news to new developers entering the Facebook app arena.

The Consequences

What happens if Slide doesn't release another app? If their current applications slow down in growth, this could be a devastating move for the company on Facebook. The move is a smart one for now. They are well established on Facebook with plenty of apps to focus on. Focusing on their current products for now is the best thing the company could do to secure their place until the new overhaul is released and properly tested. However, we wouldn't advise Slide to refrain from releasing apps ever again for Facebook and we would warn them not to wait too long before releasing their next app.

These stats will certainly be helpful for app developers to gauge the best way to market and promote their apps, and whether their marketing campaigns on Facebook ad networks like Social Media are worth their time and money. But just how most Facebook apps spread is likely to remain hazy until more data can be gathered from multiple app developers.

The Zombies app probably benefits more from requests, for example, because of the way it encourages people to invite users, while the Where I've Been app probably gets many installs from the profile box, and the Movies app likely does well in the product directory as a result of its prominence there.

Would any app developers out there care to share some of their data? It would be great if Facebook would release data across the entire network in aggregate, but until that happens, if you want to share trends you've notice for your application. please do so in the comments.

FBML, or Facebook Markup Language as it's called, was intended to ensure that malicious apps couldn't inject nasty code into the browsers of users. We assume that the new markup will have security taken care of by server side processing and this could enable an explosion in feature sharing and code efficiency.

• iLike offers tags that let you display favorite songs and playlists, complete with controls to listen, dedicate, watch, and make ringtones of those songs.


• Causes offers custom tags that let you show your support for your favorite
  causes by displaying badges that invite users to join and support the cause.


• Graffiti offers tags that let you draw and display graffiti.


• * Visual Bookshelf offers tags show the most popular books by category.

These tags should be reusable and offer some amount of customization, but the source code doesn't appear to be open. We'd love to see these tags expose their code to developers so they can be more easily altered for reuse in different ways by different apps.

Though there have been thousands upon thousands of apps built on the Facebook platform, many of them are of poor quality and have suffered since the company instituted a site redesign for quality control. Though effective app design is a competitive advantage for numerous apps that are making a shocking amount of money from ads and micropayments, we believe that at least some developers would be happy to share their best practices in the form of open, editable tag code if they were given the opportunity.

We'll see if that happens or if Facebook remains an essentially closed ecosystem, despite this big move made today. Read more about it on the Facebook Developers' Blog.

Of course it only includes Facebook data, not data from third party widgets. To be really cheeky, Netvibes should find a way to include all your third party Facebook widgets ;-) However Netvibes has actually done very well, because the only thing missing seems to be Facebook's news feed - because Facebook does not currently allow outsider providers to access the News Feed. Given that Facebook is not very open (at least outwards), this is impressive. Also it should be mentioned that you still need to click through to facebook to go through your friend requests, group invites, etc.

The biggest problem with Facebook apps is probably not that they are security-violating and spam-happy. The biggest problem is that this incredible medium for global communication is being polluted by applications that are mind-numbing, insipid and pander to the lowest common denominator of humanity - even if they are otherwise well behaved.

The new Verified Apps program will be based on three criteria:

• Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph
• Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions
• Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won't work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications

Those all sound like good ideas that any decent app should follow, presumably all but a few apps written by students and international developers unable to pay $375 will be accepted as trustworthy. Meanwhile, apps are still treated like second class citizens in the newly redesigned Facebook (they are hidden in the background) and very few truly useful ones have access to enough oxygen to grow.

This verification process should have been in place when the platform launched, though there were so many apps coming through the pipe at the time that such a program might not have been tenable. Now enthusiasm has declined greatly so a vetting program may be less of a challenge.

Honestly, though, Facebook has far more potential than the app platform at least is realizing and its problems run deeper than a verification program is going to solve.

Swimming with the Stream

There has, however, been a clear shift in the types of applications that are becoming more popular right now. The new emphasis on the stream is driving users to apps that are able to leverage the feed, while those apps that haven't adapted to this new reality yet will find it increasingly hard to get any kind of critical mass on the service.

It's not bad at all, though I still believe the real gold in Facebook is in the user's home page and minifeed - where never an outside app is seen. Profile pages just aren't where you interact with your apps and a dedicated canvas page seems likely to receive even less attention.

We would love to hear any other tips, from those of you who have created your own Facebook apps. Please leave a comment below.

RockYou also claims leadership over "all other application developers, including Slide" on the following apps:

As for slideshows, the app that started it all for both RockYou and Slide, RockYou says it is #1 in Facebook slideshows "with over 5x the engagement versus its nearest competition: 42,294 to 7,315".

While tonight RockYou has engaged in some fun one-ups-manship over its rival Slide, social networking apps are potentially big business - why else would Sequoia Capital have invested in RockYou? The company claims to have "over 35 million users, serving over 180 million widget views per day" and it makes apps for Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5, and others.

Firstly the Read/WriteWeb Facebook Group already has over 400 members, after just a few days. It's open to anyone and you can join here. We're currently looking at what apps to implement to make the group compelling - if you have any suggestions, please comment here or on the group's 'wall'.

The highlight of Facebook Week has been Josh Catone's Top 10 posts. With nearly 1800 apps, the platform has been a runaway success for Facebook, and the most popular ten applications reach over 46 million users. Josh has picked his favorite 50 apps, across 5 categories. He's doing one Top 10 every day. Here are his posts so far:

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work - can Facebook be used as an online office? You can but try, using these ten apps!

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Play - proving that he's a dedicated reviewer, Josh told me this morning on IM that he's been playing a game of facebook scrabble for 3 days now! What else can you play on Facebook? Check this post to find out :-)

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Media - today's list showcases apps that let users watch, display, look at, and remix video, audio, and photo content.

Facebook Analysis

Earlier this week I looked at how open Facebook is, really. Good comments to this post, including one from Omar Ismail who rightly asks: "is it possible to get data OUT of Facebook using REST APIs? If so, then I'd say that is quite open." Another commenter, William, answered that as follows:

"The Data and content that members own cannot be easily exported out, or used with many other existing internet applications. The flow of data and information is one way. The Open platform is in fact open for developers, but closed to the rest of the internet."

There's a lot of great Facebook analysis going on elsewhere too. Robert Scoble has a post entitled Why Microsoft doesn’t deserve Facebook. Dave McClure is possibly the most obsessed Facebook geek currently! He has loads of FB posts on his blog. Not forgetting the excellent Inside facebook, a blog devoted full-time to this topic.

Poll: How many Facebook friends do you have?

Don't forget to vote in our current poll:

When I first installed the Rock Your Firefox app, I wasn't too sure what it was for. But I soon discovered its main purpose is to be a community list of Firefox add-ons, where you can share your favorite add-ons with other Facebook users. Likewise you can see which Firefox add-ons your friends are using. A social network for Firefox add-on users, basically.

A commenter on the Rock Your Firefox homepage asked how this is different from browsing the Mozilla Add-ons site. Paul Kim, marketing director at Mozilla, replied that the main difference is that the Facebook app enables you to "find recommended add-ons from your friends on Facebook who use Firefox, and in turn letting your FB friends know the add-ons you think are useful."

This has its uses, because I have to admit that I'm curious what add-ons my friends use. For example I was able to click on Jay Meattle's FB profile and see that he is using the following two Firefox add-ons:

The main problem with this app? It doesn't display your existing add-ons. It only shows add-ons you add using Rock Your Firefox. There needs to be an automatic way for the app to detect existing add-ons and add them to your profile.

Also, it must be asked: why did Mozilla decide to create this social network on Facebook and not add their own social network functionality onto the Firefox Add-ons website? The 34 Million Facebook users was certainly a factor. And in a way it demonstrates how Facebook is becoming like a 'social network add-on' for other web apps and platforms. Why re-invent the social networking wheel when you can plug into Facebook?

At a time when many companies are struggling to find funding for their ideas, these Facebook app developers have found themselves with $25,000 more to spend on development. It's all thanks to the Facebook fbFund, a grant program designed to "identify talent and seed innovation on the Facebook Platform."

The winners - you'll find descriptions of the 25 winning apps on the Facebook Developer blog - represent a good cross-section of the Facebook population. There are apps focused on imbibing, religion, app development, sports, games, and, of course, apps focused on college life.

Among the winners were:

• Tired of sending fake drinks? BarTab lets you send real drinks to a friend for $1 that are redeemable at participating establishments.
• Apps that ease development are always cool. Daikon helps users build Facebook apps without having to code.
• Bargain shopping goes high tech with Pongr, an app that provides on-the-fly price comparisons for nearby stores.

Getting Social with the Selection Process

The current recipients will be reduced to five honorees in December - and Facebook users will get the chance to help in the selection process:

"Around mid-November, we'll start soliciting our users to help us select the five finalists. Users will have the chance to try these applications, watch the videos and vote for their favorites. Final judging of round two will factor in user voting, as well as input from Facebook, Accel Partners and Founders Fund."

Those finalists will receive an additional $225,000 in funding, each, bringing the grand total to a quarter of a million dollars in funding for each of those lucky five apps. In addition to the grant, the fbFund recipients also receive mentorship from Facebook employees and marketing assistance.

At a time when funding is becoming scarce, it's nice to see creative developers and their applications getting some much-needed cash to help them realize their vision.

It will be interesting to see how this grant program - very much micro-funding compared to typical VC investments - furthers the development for the Facebook platform.

The core product at LOLapps is actually two things: a quiz creator and a gift creator. You may not have much use for these types of applications yourself, but then, you would be in the minority. When it comes to social networks like Facebook, gifts and quizzes are some of the most popular activities taking place.

With the LOLapps tools, you're walked through a step-by-step process which allows you to create your very own custom gifts and custom quizzes which you can then share with your friends.

Essentially, the LOLapps application turns everyday users into application developers - without the user ever really knowing that's what's going on. With clear instructions written in casual, conversational language, the LOLapps building tools hop users through the somewhat convoluted and complicated steps (at least that's how they would appear to an end user) necessary to register as a developer on the social network and get the application published.

For now, the company says their business model is similar to that of a website-creation tool from ages ago: Geocities. Back in the early Web 1.0 days, users could create their own web pages at Geocities and the company made money by showing ads on those pages. LOLapps is working pretty much the same way today, except now the ads appear in apps, not web sites. LOLapps is also using virtual goods to drive revenue in some company-created applications but they will not be inserting those paid goods into the apps created by users themselves, LOLapps CEO Kavin Stewart tells us.

If you want to get a feel for what kinds of applications are being built with the LOLapps tools, we asked the company for the top apps, both quizzes and gifts. Here are the results - do any of these sound familiar?

Top 10 Quizzes

1. What Is Your Future Life?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/futurelife/
2. What Greek God are you
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-greek-god-fdde/
3. What Type Of Heart Do You Have?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/whatheart/
4. What's Your Best Quality?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/bestquality-asdf/
5. Which movie star are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/whatmovie-asdf/
6. What type of person do you attract?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/attract-asdf/
7. What song are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-song-are-jcge/
8. What will your Daughter be named?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-will-your-hfie/
9. What video game character are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-video-gam-bhdb/
10. What Kind of Music Are You?
    URL: http://apps.facebook.com/musictype/

Top 10 Gifts

1. Guardian Angels
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/guardian-angel-iibg
2. Because You're Special
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/because-your-s-badgc
3. Friendship
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/friendship-ciabh
4. Pinky Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yildizs-gifts-djah
5. Childhood Memories of the 80s
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/childhood-memo-jhcf
6. Strawberry Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/strawberry-gif-bggdd/
7. Girly Girl Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/girly-girl-gi-geheh
8. Forever Friends Bears
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/forever-friend-fbgi
9. SUSHI
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/sushi-ifia
10. CHOCOLATE!
    URL: http://apps.facebook.com/chocolate-bbghb

These acquisitions are fairly significant because they affirm how seriously companies are taking the fledging Facebook platform. Just about a month old, the Platform is already attracting about 1,000 new developers per day who have created hundreds of applications that reach millions of people. The top 25 applications alone collectively reach over 55 million users (though, obviously with a good deal of overlap). Because these apps have yet to make any money, and whether that will be possible remains an unanswered question, these acquisitions are about the users or the developers.

In the case of SideStep's purchase of Extended Info, which on the surface seems odd -- it is a popular app at 130,000 users, but it is not among the elite Facebook applications, and it has nothing to do with SideStep's core business of travel -- it appears the acquisition was more about buying a talented Facebook developer, than about acquiring users. Extended Info's creator, Trey Philips, will reportedly be leaving school to joining the SideStep team in Santa Clara, CA.

Conclusion

So will Facebook acquisitions continue? I think that's probably highly likely. With more than 38,000 developers already using the Facebook Developer app (which helps you create applications for the platform), buying popular apps is a good way for companies looking to get into the Facebook ecosystem to screen developers. And with the Facebook platform continuing to grow in popularity among its rapidly expanding user base, it seems inevitable that companies will try to buy their way to the top, especially given the relatively cheap price of purchasing Facebook apps (Favorite Peeps, for example, was had for only just over US 4 cents per user).

Who's next? My bet would be Graffiti, which is a slick app that lets people draw directly onto users' profiles and commands 3.7 million users. Or the 1.7 million user strong Honesty Box, which allows users to send anonymous messages to each other, and is the app that I have been asked by friends to install the most. What do you think? Will Facebook acquisitions continue or is this a passing fad? If you think more apps will be bought, which one is next?