Valentine’s Day, the joint venture between Hallmark and Satan, is fast approaching, bringing with it a flurry of Facebook applications.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Facebook fashion application to come out of the closet is Wear It Share It, or Wishi for short, which is aimed at making women’s closets social.

Read the rest of this entry »

The mystery behind the Timeline Movie Maker domains that were registered earlier this month has been solved, as Facebook announced the launch of an application under that name that allows users to create movies highlighting moments from their timelines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Extra! Extra! Gannett’s national newspaper jumped aboard the Facebook open graph applications bandwagon with the launch of USA Today + Me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can you kill something if it’s already dead? We got an email yesterday afternoon about a Facebook application called Kill SOPA when it was already moot.

Key backers of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, and several other lawmakers, had already announced that they were dropping their support of the bills.

Read the rest of this entry »

Video application start-up Color is promoting its new iPhone and Android apps — which allow users to substitute 30-second, audio-free video clips, which it calls “visits,” for Facebook status updates — with one hell of a pool party.

Read the rest of this entry »

Virtually every Facebook user is familiar with applications that allow users to send their friends virtual gifts, including drinks, smiles, and whatnot. If you still find a use for these apps, you may be attracted to The Mural.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the most common New Year’s resolutions, losing weight and and quitting smoking, are more easily kept through using Facebook applications that tap into positive peer pressure.

However, a number of apps in the category with decent monthly user totals aren’t available, making us wonder whether these tools are undergoing upgrades to leverage Facebook’s improved open graph as announced this September.

On the diet and exercise front, MyFitnessPal, with 9,000 monthly users, did not offer a description on its page, and the app was misconfigured.

MyDiet, with 600 monthly users, provided a lengthy description, but trying to load the app resulted in an error message.

Even more surprising, industry kingpin Weight Watchers, with 20,000 monthly users, claimed to have an app, but clicking on the button brings users to the company’s website.

Turning to smoking, Livestrong MyQuit Coach: Dare to Quit Smoking, with 400 monthly users, resulted in the same lack of content or app as MyFitnessPal.

As for apps that did actually work, in the diet and exercise category:

• LilySlim Weight Loss Tickers, with 500 monthly users, uses hand-drawn graphics to display users’ achievements in weight loss, exercise, and diet.

• Fit-ify! Exercise Tracker allows users to track running, cycling, swimming, aerobics, and other exercise activities, giving out awards for reaching milestones. Unfortunately, the app does not yet support secure browsing (via a https://).
• Perhaps the most interesting app we found, DietVille — which is not from Zynga, but resembles the Facebook game giant’s offerings, such as FarmVille and CityVille — brings a social gaming aspect to the process, pushing users within game play to lose weight and meet their goals.

And to aid Facebook users in the quest to quit smoking, there’s:

• QuitNow, with 2,000 monthly users, actually directs users to an app for iPhone and Android devices that tracks information such as day of a user’s last cigarette, days without smoking, cigarettes not smoked, money saved, time saved, and the ability to share results via Facebook and Twitter.
• QuitometeR, which boasts 1,000 monthly users, describes itself as “a community of ex-smokers and smokers who want to quit smoking,” and it displays time since quitting and money saved on users’ Facebook profiles.

• Stop Smoking Counter, with just 200 monthly users thus far, provides similar statistics to QuitNow and QuitometeR, but unfortunately, it also does not yet support secure browsing (via an address beginning with https://).

Readers: Are you using any Facebook apps to help yourselves lose weight, quit smoking or meet other goals?

Journalism and Facebook are becoming more and more intertwined, as the social network is reportedly working with about one-dozen news sources to create exclusive Facebook app versions of their content.

Read the rest of this entry »

Are word games Facebook apps time wasters? Yes, but that’s why we love them.

Of the top applications on Facebook, a large proportion of them are games.  And it’s easy to see why.  Games are a great way to escape, or simply clear your mind during a short break from work.

As many of us peruse Facebook while we’re at the office, it’s not a big jump to say that the ready access to a plethora of games within the social network is an enticing way to pass the time.  As one of the top five activities done on the Internet, gaming is also a big money maker for developers that are merely taking advantage of the portal Facebook has offered up.  Today we’re reviewing our pick for the Top 5 word games on Facebook.
Read the rest of this entry »