Mindless Facebook Applications
Published by Rodney Rumford June 28th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Applications, facebook widgets.As we continue to review and rate facebook applications, we are still scratching our heads. How come we are getting inundated with review request for mindless applications? I know that there are really smart programmers out there, so why are a large percentage of them creating applications that are not particularly useful (beyond just being fun)?
I guess useful is in the eye and mind of the beholder. I suppose it is easy to try to create the next big viral hit, and there really has to be a social component to make it a success as far as huge adoption numbers go. I guess we are still underwhelmed by a large percentage of the applications that we even consider to review. The real challenge is for facereviews to act as a lens that filters out applications that are substandard. There is nothing wrong with applications that are purely just for fun, but it seems a very large percentage of applications are falling into this group.
I won’t even mention some of the applications that people have pitched to us, we would just like to see the greater facebook community grow in usefulness with more engaging useful applications. Just some thoughts that I wanted to share this morning, Thanks for listening, comments?
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook applications, facebook developers
When you’re right you’re right. About two weeks ago you commented how this first wave of Facebook apps would be lightweight and not all that impressive, but that the second wave would be much better. I think we just need to keep waiting for that second wave. Hopefully it’ll get here soon.
Well I will be brave and ask you to tell me what you think of our MonsterDare.com facebook app?
Don’t lower your standards too much. You should bash some of the really bad ones.
Also, there is a mad rush to get your app into facebook fast. This could also be the reason why many smart programmers end up with pathetic apps. Since they want to hit the crowd before the next guy, quality suffers. My 2 cents
Nick,
We are not lowering our standards… in fact the exact opposite might be said to be true. We have high expectations for all the smart developers. Actually as time progresses we are less forgiving.
Andrew, We are already starting to see some more integrated apps, which is a good sign.
I’m not a Facebook user, but I’m a developer, so I’ve been curious to see how the whole developer platform thing ends up working out. After following this blog for a while and reading things written elsewhere, it’s occurred to me that Facebook basically said “hey web, come on in.” And so the web is coming on in. There’s a bunch of crap on the web, and now there’s a bunch of crap on Facebook. Go figure.