SmartTwitter helps strip out all of the Twitter mumbo-jumbo so all the rest of your non-tweeting Facebook friends can finally understand what you're saying.

From the app's description:

Smart Twitter was written out of the frustration with the existing Twitter-to-Facebook apps. They either copied everything, or required an arbitrary hashtag to post updates. It should be possible for a computer to figure out which Tweets should be copied to Facebook and which ones should remain on Twitter.

While copying your tweets to your Facebook may be considered lazy social media practice, there are many of us out there who do it nonetheless. If you're one of the offenders, we strongly encourage you to check out SmartTwitter.

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.

Previously, using a third-party API to update a Facebook fan page decreased the likelihood of engagement by about 80%. Facebook penalized third-party API's Edgerank and collapsed third-party API updates.

How is the Facebook News Feed treating your third-party app now? Tell us about it in the comments.

As we noted earlier this month, the average price for iPhone apps continues to fall, but the average price for the most popular iPhone apps is around $2.43 in the U.S. - which - judging from Mplayit's data - indicates that most users would like to pay less than $2 for their apps, but are more than willing to pay extra for the best and most popular apps.

Bonus: Percentage of Games in the Top App Stores

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.

For Microsoft, this is a major win, as its flagship Web productivity apps will now play a central role on the Web's most popular social network. Microsoft already integrated Facebook into Bing last month and the Office Web apps were among the first service to use Facebook's Instant Personalization feature.

Right now Facebook users on the iPhone and iPad who are using the mobile web site (m.facebook.com) will be able to get bookmarks to the mobile versions of these apps.

This is the beginning of bringing Facebook apps to mobile - parallel viral channels will come to Android soon.

Facebook Mobile Bookmarks

When an app is used, a bookmark is added to a user's main navigation on Facebook. Anyone who uses Facebook on the iPhone, iPad, and the mobile website (m.facebook.com) will get bookmarks to the mobile versions of these apps.

Facebook Requests For Mobile

If a user gets a request from a friend to join an app, they can easily accept the request from their iPhone. This goes for games, too. For example, if someone sends you a request to Sims Social and you look at it on the Facebook app of your iPhone, you'll be taken to the Sims Social app. If you don't already have the app, you'll end up in Apple's App Store. Android users will go to an HTML5 version in a mobile web browser.

Facebook News Feed

While it's already possible to use the feed dialog, now users will be able to interact with those stories on mobile. Tapping on the link will land you on the mobile version of that app, whether or not it's native iOS or a mobile web app. Clicking on news feed items will also send you to the HTML5-based app or the iTunes store to download the native version of the app.

Facebook Credits Go Mobile, But Not On iOS

Facebook Credits for mobile web apps, a payment system for virtual and digital items, are also available. In order to use Apps on Facebook, you'll be required to use Facebook Credits as your exclusive payment method.

And here's the big catch, from the Facebook Developer blog: "Native iOS apps and mobile web apps that are running within a Facebook iOS app may not use Facebook Credits." In plain English, that means Facebook Credits are available on all mobile apps *except* iOS. Using them on iOS would violate Apple's in-app purchasing rules. Because Facebook Credits is a native app, iOS users can't use credits where they otherwise should be able to. So really, Facebook won't allow users to use Facebook Credits on the native iPhone or iPad apps. Facebook has handed over control to Apple. We saw it coming.

Facebook Users' Relationship with Mobile

Facebook claims that more than 250 million people interact with the platform through mobile devices, according to Researcher Benedict Evans. Of that 250 million, 86 million come to Facebook from the iPhone, and 76 million come from Android.