ReadWriteWeb

Imagine that one day you are playing a game on a social networking site and the next day you discover that this game has been replaced by a video speed dating application. That is exactly what is going to happen to those who have been playing the Oregon Trail game on Facebook. As Webware's Josh Lowensohn first reported, the video dating site SpeedDate.com just bought the rights to this game and is planning to replace it with its own dating application.

As of today, Scrabulous, the wildly popular Facebook Scrabble game, is no more. If you try to login to the app now you'll get the message "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice." You have the option of entering your email address to receive further information about developments in the matter. While Scrabulous fans are certainly angered over the app's shutdown, the unanswered question still looms: did Hasbro have to do this?

Yesterday, we told you that Facebook would be launching its new design today and briefly highlighted the coming changes. Today we've received the official word from the Facebook team that the new profile is indeed live. According to the company, access to the new design will be limited at first as it gradually becomes available to all of their more than 80 million users over the coming days. What's most interesting about the new Facebook design, though, is not just the change in the aesthesis. Instead, the new look reflects the changing needs of their core user base.

Blogs just got a whole new audience: the casual reader. There has been some concern as of late that mainstream web users don't really read blogs, but a new Facebook app called "Blog Networks" aims to change that. The easiest way to describe this app is by calling it MyBlogLog for Facebook (as the headline says), but besides the ability to build a community around your blog, the two apps are rather different. If anything, Blog Networks may have the power to reach an entirely different demographic than MyBlogLog, whose community made up of a lot of blog owners and serious blog readers. The Facebook app, on the other hand, will appeal to casual readers by providing them with an easy-to-use blog directory and a simplified feed reader.

The weekend is a good chance to play around with web apps and social networks. With that in mind, on a rainy Sunday I found myself checking out Sarah Perez's classic post from May: How to Make Facebook Useful Again. You may also want to read the comments for other useful suggestions. But if you just want the highlights and then do some experimenting within Facebook on a lazy Saturday or Sunday, then here they are:

Signal Patterns, makers of scientific-based social web apps, have just released a Facebook app whose goal is to help you find new friends based on an in-depth personality assessment algorithm. This app matches people based on their unique personality traits - not just "rough" personality types. If that sounds a lot like some dating web sites you've heard of...well, you're right. Signal Patters is essentially offering eHarmony for Facebook except instead of love connections, they hope to offer you a better way to find friends. The question is, is that something we need?

In the upcoming weeks, Facebook will be making drastic changes to its system. The site will sport a major UI overhaul and a new platform for developers to work with is in production. Facebook feels these changes will help the social network in numerous ways. However Slide, one of Facebook's biggest application makers, may feel differently.

Oh the heels of some of Facebook's missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year. However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn't have Facebook worried. Why is that? Because Facebook has a whole generation of users who grew up using their site for everything social back when it was just a way to network with their high school or college friends. So what are the everyday Facebook users doing that keeps them engaged in the service? It's not throwing sheep, apparently. For many Facebook users, there are still useful apps to be found and ways to use the service that the rest of us could learn from.

The music search engine and Internet jukebox, Songza, lets you seek out any song on the web and stream it immediately. In January of this year, we announced the site's partnerships with Seeqpod and Skreemr, which allowed them to grown their online library to 28 million songs. Now, Songza grows again with a launch of a new Facebook app and the arrival of a Songza API.

Many small and medium sized businesses may have an interest in maintaining a presence on social networks, but don't the time, money, or resources to do so. For them, a new service provided by a company called Bizzlr can help. For a small monthly fee, companies can use Bizzlr's solution to connect with customers on many of the major social networks.

Over the weekend, a chart from the Flowing Data blog "revealed" that Facebook applications, on the whole, are silly. Much of the discussion that followed was of the patronizing "see, we told you Facebook apps were dumb" variety. Nevermind that the category data is based on developer defined categorization (i.e., this is how the apps makers see their apps, not necessarily how users might classify them), the real reason there are so many fun apps on Facebook is because the distribution channels are biased toward their success, or so says Ben Rattray of Change.org.

A report on BBC's technology program, Click, has exposed yet another security flaw in Facebook - one that could comprise users' privacy. This particular hack involves using a Facebook application to steal a users personal information - and the information of all their friends - without the user's knowledge.

Scrabulous, the extremely popular but unauthorized Scrabble Facebook app, has been under fire thanks to Hasbro and Mattel, the two companies who own the rights to Scrabble - Hasbro in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world. The companies threatened to take Scrabulous offline, a move which prompted major public outcry from fans who proceeded to sign online petitions, join groups in support of the game, and even threaten boycotts of the companies' products.

Tonight at the Graphing Social Patterns, 10 social applications gave demonstrations for the GSP West AppNite. The first six applications were Facebook Apps and the last four were Open Social applications.

Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure taught a class last semester at Stanford on Building Facebook Applications. In 10 weeks, the 80 students had created 50+ applications and in total had over 20 Million installs - with 5 having more than 1 million users. At today's Graphing Social Patterns conference, BJ and his two teacher assistants shared 10 tips they learned from the experience. Here they are: