Feedback appreciated. I will keep checking back in.

While I agree with your view that apps need to move to the next level, I think it is also important to allow a userbase to naturally progress to the next level as well;

If all the apps are something irrelevant, and users have installed 850 million of them (as per adonomics), then maybe that’s the current user taste as well!

Finally, yes it is important to develop the next level of apps and many companies have already started doing that. However, if facebook restricts the ability for an app to grow via invites & notifications, even a relevant app will not be able to stand out in the crowd of irrelevant apps.

Very interesting take, but I think your premise needs to be expanded a bit. I view FB as a content delivery platform – in many ways it has the same key attributes as it’s predecessors, Radio TV and even the Telephone.

People often get locked in to viewing FB as strictly diversionary, or they want to move it to more a utilitarian focus – in the end it’s the ability to take the 3 most powerful forms of content delivery (Radio, TV and the Telephone) and fuse them into one via the Internet.

I won’t go into the minutia of why FB has the key content delivery attributes of the BIG three – but here’s a quick summary:

1. Radio (Feed and Mini-Feed)
- Mass broadcast of information, music, and even User Generated Content (talk radio)

2. TV (Photo Albums, Profile Pics)
- Broadbase entertainment, selling (HSN), advertising (Infomercials), information dissemination

3. Telephone (Calendar, Events, Networks)
- Personal interaction, socialization, event/activity coordination, etc.

The real power of FB isn’t that it embodies these key attributes – but that it enables the *bundling* of these based on each application’s consumer base. FB gives you the mass communication and entertainment features of Radio and TV while enabling easy personal interaction and socialization of the Telephone.

The problem with FB developer’s today is many are simply building apps that mimic just one of these powerful platforms. Instead they should be focusing on ways to create totally new methods using ALL three!

Until FB developers start to understand this simple – yet powerful, compelling and even life changing capability, they’ll never be able to take advantage of what the FB platform offers.

DT

So, while not a utility in the definitive sense, apps like this do provide utility – they allow users to engage each other and to form new social connections.

We designed Just Three Words with this in mind. It attracts among others writing afficianados, writers, and improvisation artists. And they have forged friendships with each other via the app. In other words, our game has facilitated new connections for users that did not exist in their social graph prior to using our app, and we’ve added significant value to their FB experience.

This same facilitation could take place within other games that although are in one sense diversionary are also avocational for many people. Poker and scrabble come to mind. As does writing

There are at least two approaches to creating vehicles in which people can create new connections: the first is by explicit expression(my expressed Interests/Books/Movies are like yours, hey lets connect), and behavioral expression (I’m playing a word game, you’re playing a word game and I noticed we work well together, hey lets connect). Apps can be created, both utilitarian or diversionary, for each of these example cases (among others).

I think that there is plenty of room for applications of discovery and applications of entertainment; what we need to see is greater imagination behind both kinds of apps now that “What Kind Of Cigarette Butt Are You” apps have probably now been given their death knell.

Just wanted to highlight that we have launched an Ecommerce application on facebook, and we believe in growing this into a serious utility app.

Do have a look at the application in your spare time, and any suggestions/reviews / improvement hightlights are welcome.

We are readying our application for an integration with Bebo, currently.

Just to give an overview, we have introduced some new concepts wherein users can post to select groups / networks only. Features are also provided for bargaining between 2 friends, apart from the usual auction type sales. There is a main Global Market through which posts can reach out to users in other Social Networks.

Thanks,
Santosh