I logged in to Facebook today to find a number of 'application invitations' on my requests page. Based on this small sample, it's apparent that I am unlikely to adopt the apps that are either (a) advanced navel-gazing or (b) gushy new random friend-making. Instead, I was drawn to those applets that enabled me to leverage or deepen the existing connections on my Facebook network, or that hinted of secondary platforms. It's also clear that if you were to actually accept all of the invites, your profile page would be cluttered and unreadable beyond belief.
Here's the ad-hoc review of the F8-inspired applications that I was invited to this morning, and my gut reactions:
Applications considered but rejected
- Get Social. I initially added this, thinking that it would be nice to see who else might be going to a concert, but that doesn't appear easily. After joining, I couldn't filter through what events my network were attending well, so I deleted the app. Pros: Good idea to apply the networking to planned events as vs. ad-hoc events, or to get a sense of what events are popular. Cons: I wanted more transparency into my friend network's commitments and was left unsatisfied.
- Going Out? is self-explanatory - the idea is that I'll send/receive outing invites within my network. Pros: could help to make spontaneous or new going-out buddy matches. Cons: Based on the reviews it sounds like it's troublesome to actively select who will receive the invites, and I definitely would want to control who got which invites (e.g., if I need a date for a party I would want a fairly fine level of control.) I'm also not tethered enough (read: no Blackberry) to receive those spontaneous invites in time to act on them.
- Health Tip of the Day. Also just like it sounds, a health tip sent to me each day. Nah. Pros: Vaguely entertaining, a la horoscopes, perhaps motivational for some. Cons: Not entertaining enough.
- I Am Green lets you make public pledges for how you'll become more green in the future. Pros: I admire the sentiment, the community-building aspect, and the Weight Watchers/Alcoholics Anonymous/43 Things-like behavioral reinforcement. Cons: Too preachy a style for me (I share my personal goals with friends that care about me, rather than the issues we have in common), also not something that would add value to my Facebook experience. Note: this would make more sense added to green activism/green living networks like Care2.
- Movies. Shows movies I want to see, my ratings, etc. I initially added this, but then removed it because it kept not saving my changes, and it seemed like it would consume more time than the fun it would create. Pros: Fun to share movie interests with friends. Cons: Hard to find movie listings, loses changes, didn't add value to movie-picking for tonight.
- Top Friends. Stratifies your Facebook friends list so that you can highlight up to 32 'top friends.' Pros: Makes it easy to create a 'frequent contact' group. Cons: Risk of turning into adolescent popularity contest. Won't use this for the same reason that I never actually click 'reject' in LinkedIn.
Application invitations accepted
- Blog Friends. This applet purports to add relevant posts from my Facebook friends' blogs to my Facebook news feed. Pros: Seems like a logical feature extension and potentially helpful, so I said yes. Cons: Forced to receive the vendor's email updates and asked to spam (er, I mean 'invite') friends before I've had a chance to test drive the quality of the app.
- Causes. This allows individuals to make a cause statement/take incremental actions while making it easy for nonprofits to find and aggregate member-advocates. Nicely done. Pros: Don't have to overcommit up front - can join now and invite friends, donate, get more involved later. Also, joining Causes once means I can then align myself with many other causes; for example, I joined Wikimedia first and easily added Full Circle Fund second. (This somewhat replicates the Care2 aggregation model, though it remains to be see if Causes will also use its aggregated cause members in order to generate for-profit income.) Cons: You are invited to invite friends to join afterwards; 10 are selected at random, but the applet suggested the same 10 friends for both causes initially. I 'reshuffled' succesfully but I imagine most folks don't want to spam the same 10 friends for every new cause they join.
- My Questions. Post a polling question on your profile, and collect the answer. Pros: Fun and potentially productive, easy to add, and non-intrusive. Cons: Though easy to deselect, the app cheekily defaulted to spamming (oops, inviting) *all* of my friends to join. Also, no way to 'continue' past the invite page without clicking on Invite Friends.
- Scrabulous. Scrabble a la Facebook. Since I'm not a chess player, I loved the idea of the slow, virtual game. Play is generally intuitive. Pros: Fun new way to match up for games, potential for Twitter-like addiction. Cons: Game board doesn't show in profile. Requires trust, since you can't see if your pal is sneaking looks in the dictionary. Possibly this is a 'pro' as well.
I was generally impressed that I liked 4 out of 10 apps enough to incorporate them into my profile. I'm curious to see how the segmentation of these applets will continue to evolve...since it only takes a few weeks to put a Facebook application together (assuming that you already have an existing app that you're simply tying in) I expect that the generation changes will happen quickly. I'll have to go back and see how these offerings compare to the apps touted at the platform launch.
