The photo tagging phenomenon has officially jumped the shark on Facebook with the All my Friends! application which lets you instantly tag your friends in pre-made images. It’s not exactly a new concept but for some reason this iteration of the application has been extremely successful having attracted over 5 million users so far and growing daily.

The application could actually be a useful service but the way that ads are currently posted within the application makes us think that this app was simply developed to attract millions of users and generate a quick buck. I’ve written about these multi-user photos that are meant for tagging friends in the past but this application appears to be spreading without providing much value. Most of the people that I’ve seen tagged in images are from users with loose ties to the originator of the image.

Why would someone post an image and tag people they aren’t close friends with under the heading “best friends”? It doesn’t make much sense. I can understand how the simplicity of this application is sufficient at attracting millions of users however I’m not quite sure that there’s a large enough value proposition from the app. Applications like this ultimately damage the overall experience for Facebook users that have a lot of contacts.

Over the past few days I’ve been tagged at least 5 or 6 times and I’ve noticed other people in my feed who have been tagged as well. With 5 million users it’s kind of annoying but if it grows to 30 million it will be more than just annoying.