Resurgence of Facebook Applications
It could easily be argued that Facebook’s redesign more than six months ago basically threw a blanket over the social network’s applications. While many of the irritating aspects of applications were muted thanks to the new interface, it came at a big cost to Facebook application developers.
Late last week, Facebook announced the launch of several new application programming interfaces a few days after hopping on board with the OpenID Foundation.
While many saw Facebook’s move towards more openness as a direct threat to Twitter, it could also signal a baby step towards a resurgence for Facebook applications.
One way to spark an application revival would be to give them more visibility again, but the likelihood of that happening is near to nothing. Instead, another way to boost applications is to bring them more depth and usefulness.
“Specifically, your applications can now directly access all of a user’s status, links, and notes via new methods and FQL calls,” said Chris Putnam, an engineer at Facebook, on the Facebook Developers blog.
“Your application will have access to any status, notes, or links from the active user or their friends that are currently visible to the active user. In addition, we’re opening new APIs for you to post links, create notes, or upload videos for the current user, and we’ve made setting a user’s status easier.”
According to Adnomics, Causes is the top application in terms of installs. It lays claim to nearly 1.3 million daily active users, according to the analytics and advertising platform for Facebook.
Super Wall is second in terms of installs, and has nearly 980,000 daily active users, according to Adnomics.
Movies, Hug Me, Top Friends, Likeness, iLike, Superpoke!, Video and Compare People rounded out the top 10 list as of Sunday evening.
The current landscape reflects a rather large shift from the way it appeared just a year ago, mostly thanks to Facebook’s redesign.
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=193
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10159110-2.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/what-facebooks-open-platform-means-for-you/
