The final installment in our look at the top 50 Facebook apps will look at 10 apps for extension. These apps extend Facebook’s core functionality to improve upon existing features (for the most part). This was the hardest list to create because there is probably more overlap in this category than any of the others, which meant excluding a lot of apps. This is a completely subjective list, so not everyone will agree with our picks and I encourage you to debate them in the comments.
This post is the last in a 5-part series that has identified our picks for the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work, Part 2: Play, Part 3: Media, and Part 4: Utility as well.
Extended Info
Extended Info is the perfect app to start off this list — it even uses the word extended in the title! This app, which won the F8 Hackathon contest, allows you to tell the world more about yourself by adding custom profile fields such as activities, interests, favorite coffee shops, or whatever you can think of. With Extended Info your profile also supports videos, images, MP3 files, and colored text.
SuperPoke!
Who wants to poke someone when you can pinch them instead? SuperPoke! extends the built in poking application on Facebook by allowing you choose from an extensive list of additional actions. What sets SuperPoke! apart from other poking apps, is that you can choose to dole out new pokes, rather than just adding new forms of poking to your own profile. It would be great, though, if like the popular X Me app, you could define your own original poke styles.
Advanced Wall
The Advanced Wall app takes the Facebook wall to new levels by adding support for styled text, images, videos, and flash. This is all made possible through a nice wysiwyg editor. Some people might argue that this type of app causes the “MySpacification” of Facebook and should be shunned. But millions of people disagree, having already installed this app and others like it.
Top Friends
Top Friends is by far the most popular third-party application on Facebook, and with good reason: it’s actually pretty useful. I have about 150 friends on Facebook, but I only regularly interact with a handful of those. Top Friends lets you create a box on your profile of your 32 favorite contacts for quick access. Rather than having to slog through your entire list of friends to find the buddy whose profile you’re after, you can just click once after making him or her a Top Friend.
Live Blog
Live Blog replaces Facebook’s notes app with a full blog that is displayed on your profile. It has support for YouTube vidoes and HTML, and includes commenting. Coming soon: RSS/Atom feeds, draft and preview functions, and built-in image upload.
Friend Stats
Friend Stats brings Facebook’s network stats closer to home by showing you what your friends are into. It’s a pretty interesting way to learn about your group of friends or coworkers and gives you a ton of statistics culled from their profiles including age, sex, political leaning, who writes the most notes, has the most wall posts, has held the most jobs, and a lot of other interesting facts. For example, among my friends, the most popular movie is “Boondock Saints” and the most popular TV show is “Family Guy.”
Widgets
Like Advanced Wall, many people feel the Widgets app from Widgetbox contributes to the “MySpacification” of Facebook. And they may have a point. Widgets allows users to add any of the more than 10,000 Widgetbox widgets to their Facebook profile — just like MySpace — but thankfully, it doesn’t let users get around the no autoplay rule Facebook imposes on Flash widgets. Many of the widgets available in this app let you add functionality from outside apps that have yet to make the jump to Facebook, and so this application will have a use for many people.
Graffiti
Graffiti is the most popular of the Facebook drawing apps. It’s not the most advanced, but I think it is the easiest to get the hang of. And you can actually make some pretty impressive art with it if you A) have some modicum of talent and B) have the patience to do it (see below for an example). Graffiti places a simple drawing app on your profile that lets your friends leave you drawn obscenities (or works of art — whatever they fancy).
van Gogh’s “Starry Night” reproduced in Facebook.
Moodsic
There are a number of Facebook apps for displaying your mood (an extension of the built-in status app) and when I started I honestly didn’t think I would pick this one. But Moodsic is one of the more novel of the mood apps. With Moodsic, you set you mood and the app matches how you feel with songs from popular artists. Moodsic got serious points for matching my mood of “somewhat sleepy” with “The Weight” by The Band — a classic. Moodsic is also a monetized app — you and your friends can purchase the music you’re listening to. Some annoying bits: You can only play tracks once, and if you skip too many it disables skipping (similar to Pandora, in that respect).
I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin’ about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand, and “No!”, was all he said.
—The Band
iGift
This was a tough one to choose. Both of the two top gifting applications on Facebook, which let you send Facebook-style gift icons for free, have the same number of gifts and more or less identical interfaces and features. In the end iGift won out for two reason: it has marginally better artwork than its chief rival, and it is categorized, making it easier to find the perfect gift for any occasion (or at least any occasion where sending a thumbnail image of a hot dog is appropriate).
Conclusion
Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for extension. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn’t be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. Let the debate begin!
