In part 3 of my top 10 Facebook applications series, I will be looking at the top 10 apps that have to do with media. For the most part, these are apps that let users watch, display, look at, and remix video, audio, and photo content. 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 third in a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work and Part 2: Play, as well.
Video
Video is an official app from Facebook that allows users to upload videos, post videos directly from mobile phones, or record them from web cams. These videos are pretty high quality, can be posted to your profile or friends’ Walls, or sent via the insite messaging system. One of the more interesting features is per-video permission that let you decide on a video-to-video basis who sees each clip.
iLike
iLike is the third most popular application on Facebook (a fact that Mike Arrington wrote about yesterday). It’s easy to see why the iLike app is well-liked by Facebook users. It lets you add music and music videos directly to your profile, as well as find concerts and concert attendees in your area. Though audio from some of the major label artists songs appears only as 30 second clips, iLike offers hundreds of thousands of full songs and it’s all legal.
Art
There are two apps on Facebook called ‘Art,’ but this one by Matt Kraft and Phil Edwards is already bringing a little more class to the profiles of about 30,000 users. Choosing from over 160,000 classic works of art, users can use this fun little app to create their own custom galleries in their profiles to show off their tastes and share some culture with their friends. Users can annotate their galleries with their own notes and demonstrate their art history knowledge.
Audio
We already looked at the Facebook Video app, so here comes the Audio application. This one wasn’t created by Facebook, but instead by a member of the faculty at Stanford University. However, because of its simplicity, more than 700,000 users utilize Audio to find, share, and play MP3 music files.
Shoebox
Shoebox is something like a social bookmarking app for Facebook, but its key feature is its support for media like photos and videos. Shoebox, which is the Facebook version of Plum, lets users clip webpages, save photos and videos, and share them with friends and other Facebook users. Users can sort saved items by tags.
Splashcast
The Splashcast app on Facebook allows users to remix photos, videos, audio and documents or use feeds from YouTube, Flickr or any RSS source to create multimedia slideshows. You can use these slideshows to create a multimedia channel that displays your favorite media with your own comments and annotations. Creation is done via Splashcast’s easy-to-use flash editor completey from within Facebook.
Last.fm
Last.fm was kind of slow to jump on the Facebook platform bandwagon, so there are a bunch of Last.fm apps created by fans, but only one of them is the official application. Last.fm’s app lets Facebook users share their favorite music in the form of a playlist of full length tracks. With “Buy Album” apps integrated directly on each playlist item, Last.fm is one of the few apps on Facebook that is currently subtly monetizing.
Fliptrack
Fliptrack is a cool little Facebook app that members can use to create music videos out of their friends’ uploaded photos and videos. Add music (from a library), text, and effects and then share the completed videos on your profile.
Timeline
Timeline is a twist on the standard photo slideshow that lets you display photos in a playable timeline. Timeline automatically fills out information from your life (your date of birth, where and when you went to school, work history, etc.) that it learns from your profile. Adding events is easy. One thing that is lacking is that it appears you can only use photos from your own albums, but it would be great to be able to use photos from friends’ albums as well.
GridView
GridView is a very simple app that displays the profile pictures of your friends in a mosaic embeds it on your own profile. GridView isn’t the most practical app, but it is a pretty neat way to visualize your friends and turn their photos into a piece of profile art.
Conclusion
Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for media. 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. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 4 of our list. Let the debate begin!
