Utility

There has been significant buzz surrounding Google’s recent foray into the Facebook platform. Apparently they launched their application a couple of days ago and since the “launch” it has gone down. Rodney Rumford seems to believe that this application is probably a hoax. Pete Cashmore has stated that it is not.

I have know that Google was building Facebook applications for months now. This is nothing new but this will be their first one to launch. I also know of a number of potential Facebook competitors that are launching applications as well. Everyone involved in web technology is launching a Facebook application. Let’s be honest, it’s the word of the day (Facebook that is). In regards to the application, you can search the web, images, You Tube, blogs, books and maps. It looks like a pretty impressive application but I have yet to try it out. I will be sure to give more feedback once I have.

The application has now been down for over 24 hours and has no signs of coming back. While some seem to think that Google would make an official announcement about their application launch, I think that would be slightly ridiculous. Instead they are going to test the Facebook waters and not comment on the issue. While there is no official word that this is real, I have to believe that it is simply because I know that Google is working on Facebook applications. It is a little suspicious though that there is no about page. Let me know if you get the app to work.

One of the biggest complaints about Facebook is the inability to embed videos in other places outside of Facebook. Thanks to Michael Medley, the creator of the Facebook Video greasemonkey script, that is no longer a problem. The script adds a small textbox to each video page which enables users to place the video elsewhere. I have embedded a video below of myself speaking at the first Washington, D.C. Barcamp about the Facebook platform using the script. In case you are interested I will be posting all of the D.C. Barcamp videos on my other blog. I wonder if Facebook is going to ban this. If Facebook decides to embrace this feature, they will become more of a competitor to MySpace, who’s video platform has become one of the largest on the web.

Henrick Shyu of Japan, has made a new application that helps you rapidly get a lot more friends. The application is simple. You add the app, and start browsing through people that you can add as friends. They have also added the application and are taking advantage of it. I found the application to be particularly useless because it consists of randomly adding people as friends even if you don’t know them. This is in clear violation of Facebook’s terms of service.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some people even get banned for using the application. As of now Facebook blocks you from adding too many friends in a limited period of time for spamming reasons. I don’t see why this application would be any exception. This application is definitely going to be banned within a short period of time. If you like gambling and want to see how long you can leverage this application go grab the 1,000,000 friends application.

One of the most popular posts on my blog has been my article about the Trakzor application. Trakzor enabled you to view visitors to your profile. A similar application, TrackBot, has just launched and provides even more features. The coolest aspect of this application is that all visits to your profile page are successfully tracked. It’s almost like a Google analytics of Facebook. The only difference is the factors that TrackBot tracks. You can view statistics regarding the total number of visits, the number of visits by gender, the number of your friends that visit and anonymous visits as well. This application is a really useful tool and I think the developers did an excellent job on this one. The one downfall of this application is the massive ad that is displayed at the bottom of the page. Literally half of the page is filled by an ad for the Post Secret application. Not a serious problem but it is somewhat distracting. If you want to get your profile traffic statistics, go grab the TrackBot application.

For all those Netvibes users, you can now access all of your important Facebook information from the comfort of your Netvibes homepage. Tariq Krim posted about it this morning on the Netvibes blog. The widgets displays information about your messages, pokes, friend and group requests, event invites, birthdays and friend details. The only thing currently missing from this widget is access to your newsfeed which is not currently accessible via the Facebook API. I’ve seen some pretty slick widgets for iGoogle but this one is definitely the best start page widget that I have seen yet. It would be pretty awesome if you could perform all of your routine Facebook tasks from within widgets but unfortunately Facebook has not opened up access to a lot of these components yet. This brings up a question about Facebook. Will they ever end being a walled garden? I believe so but I’ll save that conversation for another blog post. Scoble commented this morning on Plaxo trying to make opening up their network their competitive advantage over Facebook. I have to agree with Scoble who thinks this won’t work. I’m going to leave it at that for now. If you want to add Facebook to your Netvibes account, go grab the Facebook widget.

My friend Joe Suh launched a new application yesterday which allows you to automatically import your LinkedIn resume directly into your profile. While it is a basic application, it is one of the components that could help drive users away from LinkedIn and toward Facebook. The real killer application will enable the differentiation of professional from social profiles (as I mentioned two days ago). While this application doesn’t go all the way it is a great step in the right direction. You are able to either upload your resume or have your work history captured from your LinkedIn profile. Additionally, recommendations are transferred into your profile as well. This is a simple application that combined with a larger application would contribute to the demise of LinkedIn. If you want to transfer over your LinkedIn profile and recommendations go grab the Resume application.

So what is this killer application that I speak of (and perhaps the golden app that I spoke of yesterday)? It is an application the allows you to store all of your social relationships, photos, and personal details. As my professional and social networks collide I need to be reserved in what is displayed on my existing profile. With the development of an application where I can select users that can view my personal profile (in this hypothetical application), I could transition 100% over to Facebook. I will be able to maintain stronger bonds with professional contacts and my social contacts can still see the unfiltered version of me. What do you think?

Have you joined so many groups that it is hard to sort through them from your profile? Thanks to the new Top Groups application visitors to your profile can now have a cleaner way of viewing your most important groups. The Top Groups application has a clean profile design and a friendly interface for modifying what groups display on your profile. When I was using the application I immediately found a bug while trying to modify my groups. By default there are specific groups that are already checked but not displayed in your top groups. When you go to uncheck ones that you don’t want, instead of removing the groups they ended up being added to my Top Groups. I’m not quite sure why that was happening but it was the only bug that happened. Aside from that everything worked well. This application is extremely simple but provides a much nicer interface for users to view what groups you feel most connected to. It would be awesome if you could remove the original groups box on your profile and replace it with this one. Unfortunately Facebook requires that you keep this module on your profile. Hopefully this will change soon. If you want to show off your favorite groups on your profile, go grab the Top Groups application.

Update
Steve, the developer of the application, contacted me to notify me that the bug I mentioned has been resolved. Additionally, I was mistaken when I said that you can’t remove Facebook’s groups box from your profile. Simply click the “X” in your profile and click the button that says “Remove Box.” This is an awesome substitute for the existing groups application built by Facebook!

Want to be able to send out a broadcast poke? Thanks to John Watson, now you can. The Poke O’ Matic application allows you to poke all of your friends each time you visit the Facebook homepage. Why would you want to do this you ask? The only reason I can see for doing it is to constantly send all of your friends a reminder that you are still around. Ultimately, every time that you login to Facebook (which I’m guessing is on a daily basis) your friends will receive a poke. Additionally, you can customize how frequently pokes are sent out to your friends, and how many friends receive a poke. By default the application is set to 100 pokes every 24 hours which seems like plenty of poking to me. There is also a nice little counter on your homepage that notifies you of how many of your daily pokes have been sent. If you love poking as much as I do then you will surely need to grab the Poke O’ Matic application.

Want an easy way to find your real neighbors that are on Facebook? Nathan Blecharczyk has created an application that automatically displays your closest 50 neighbors. I was surprised that when I added the application there were already 15 people within 25 miles of me that had added the application. Pretty impressive given that the application currently has only 233 people using it. I’m somewhat skeptical as to how many people will start using this application. I already know of two friends that have had stalker experiences on Facebook and I’m sure there are plenty more. There is no way that people concerned with their privacy will start using this application. Additionally you can already search people and sort your results by distance so you can pretty much assume that the first 50 results are within a close proximity to wherever you live (as long as you have entered your address). If you want to find out who your closest neighbors are or want to let people know that you live near them, go grab the See Your Neighbors application.

Yesterday morning one of my readers drew my attention to a new Facebook application called searchCrystal. SearchCrystal is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from various web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines and RSS feeds. I have seen similar applications that use the “Bulls-eye” design technique, but prior to this application I had yet to see a search application utilizing this unique design style. I of course searched my name to see what would result and it looks like my other blog showed up in the bulls-eye. Not bad! While I probably won’t use searchCrystal as my primary search engine, it definitely puts a unique twist on search. If you enjoy trying out alternative search methods, this is the application for you. Go grab the searchCrystal application to get started.