Scobleizer - Latest Comments in The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

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Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Anatoly Lubarsky — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:37:22 -0000

You can try Fosimo
http://www.onecone.com/Page...

or on Facebook:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb...

Desktop program that works with Facebook. It is supposed to be compatible with superconnectors - people like you that have thousands of Facebook friends.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

brklynsurfer — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:20:49 -0000

Try 30boxes.com it works
Also you should do an interview with 83 degrees, the team behind 30boxes.com

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Daniel Graf — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 22:12:10 -0000

If you are interested in kyte.tv, here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/app...

kyte.tv on facebook should work seamless - check it our on Scoble's facebook profile.

Don't know what kyte.tv is? Here's a review of our facebook app: http://facereviews.com/2007...

BTW, lots of exciting new features coming next week...

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Mark Allanson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:22:49 -0000

+1 for the Shelfari application - works as advertised. Allows you to sync your facebook account with shelfari account and edit on either site.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

mario romero — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:47:57 -0000

here is the link for the Google Reader app (thanks for diging it Scoble!)
http://www.facebook.com/app...
also a lot of new features coming this weekend

btw, not affiliated with google at all.. or FB for that matter.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Badger Gravling — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:28:10 -0000

Some of the apps may be quite useful, but there's so much that is either useless, or doesn't work. It'll take time to sort the good from the worthless.

And the next person to give me a zombie bite or invite me to a food fight will be in serious trouble...

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Matthew Arnold — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:43:38 -0000

I totally agree with you Robert... filtering through all the crappy applications is pretty annoying. The only useful ones I use that I highly recommend are

- Catbook or Dogbook (if you have pets)
- Xbox Live (shows your gamercard)
- Google Reader (I agree with you there!)
- Mobile... who needs Twitter when this application does such similar things? ;)

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Jonah — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:32:49 -0000

I think you nailed the problem, but you left out part of the causation. Sure a lot of Apps don't work. But its mostly because companies are trying to produce their Apps with speed and not quality.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Larry Rubin — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:12:51 -0000

I had high hopes for the Box.net Files app (file storage & sharing) and have so far been unimpressed. It allowed me to upload files, but so far the only thing that displays on my profile is a message that reads "Box.net Files App Loading..."

These entities are really shooting themselves in the foot with poor quality apps- as soon as someone gets frustrated with an app, it only takes about two seconds to complain publicly about it in the forum on the app's main page.

In the case of the Box.net app, I responded to a post in a discussion titled "Files sucks so far" which resulted in an entry in my mini-feed that reads "Larry discussed Files sucks so far on the Files application discussion board."

Talk about viral bad PR...

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Zach Allia — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:38:55 -0000

Come on.. Free Gifts is easily the most useful application and it works great! You know you love it. :-)

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Jay Srinivasan — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:16:27 -0000

I share in your FB app miseries. Seems like all the stable apps are of no interest to me and the intriguing ones never work. I've decided to give up on the platform until the kinks are worked out.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Alex Lowe — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:25:46 -0000

I started using Facebook a week ago, after much resistance to the new culture of technologists. So, my bias in the comment is that I'm not a big Facebook fan. The Facebook apps are interesting to me though. The integration could be better (often times it's hard to figure out how they are accessed after installed).

I added "Feed invasion" to my site to show the feeds of my personal blogs on my Facebook site. It's working well enough, but I'd like more... like to be able to change the number of items shown, to change the order of the blogs, to show a summary of the posts, etc.

There is also a lot of noise with the Facebook app search, looks like a lot of junk to me.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Felix — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:47:17 -0000

Hi Robert,

I just met with Dave Morin from Facebook the mastermind behind platform. He says that the problems you had with the Plazes app is a problem that many apps will have right now if you have thousands of friends. The Facebook API cannot handle status request for thousands of friends at the same time right now. So I hate to say it, but you´re a border case ;)

Talk to Dave about it.

We will however do everything necessary to ensure quality from our side.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Simos — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 06:11:48 -0000

Reading all these kind of makes me change my mind about creating a facebook app for our site www.peopleperhour.com.

I'm just taking a high-level view; with so many apps already out there, and some stability issues it just sounds like unless we manage to create the mother of all apps, the commercial gain for us might not be much at this point in time.

@Jonathan - I think you are absolutely right, full integration will be key and that's why I'm getting a bit nervous embarking on the FB apps path right now.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

davemc500hats — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:39:09 -0000

thanks robert... i aspire to smart-ass ;)

btw, try out SkypeMe & TokBox &
ChatterBox.

cool stuff :)

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:12:09 -0000

Agreed - and really, with all the JaiTwiPownce apps, can't *anyone* talk to the Facebook folks and find out a way to fully integrate with the site's own status updates (eg. "Jonathan is...")?

Having a load of random application stuck on your profile is one thing. But fully integrating them will be the key.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Thomas — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:08:48 -0000

I had to install the Notes application a couple of times to get my blog feed to display. Notes would install, but the blog feed just would not import. Finally on about the third try, it just worked.

I haven't spent a lot of time looking, but the only application that installed and worked well for me was the Zoho integration.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Pat Phelan — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:06:33 -0000

Not really having the same problems here Robert, I like the Dopplr app quite a lot and its always pretty ok, The new Jangl app Phonebook is really good also. Lets give everyone time to bed this in.
Gave up on Twitter and Pownce appears not to be going to happen unfortunately.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Deepak — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:19:58 -0000

The Jaxtr app seems to work properly, as do the kyte.tv and splashcast apps. Of course the native Facebook apps are just fine. Picnick has worked for me thus far. I would say the Twitter and Pownce apps have been the biggest disappointments, and the last.fm app rocks, but is not yet 100% stable.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Ravi — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:45:35 -0000

By far and away the most useful application I have found is myTV. It gives you full YouTube search functionality within Facebook inside an amazing interface - really sleek, all in flash.

You can add an unlimited number of YouTube videos to your profile, see what videos your friends have added etc.

They just launched a Hot Videos section that's pretty useful, it shows all the videos being watched on the myTV application in a live feed, top in 24 hours, top in the week - kind of like Digg.

Never had any problems with it, everything works quite well.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

todd sawicki — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:44:16 -0000

Couldn't agree more - that's why I made the comment on mcclure's post that it reminds of the 1995 and the explosion of shareware after win95 was launched most of which was crap. It's early, early, early in the development of FB apps but what's interesting is how much more polished myspace widgets were a year ago.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Bill Busen — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:51:27 -0000

Actually, the Facebook applications platform has some stability issues - join the Developers group and read the discussion board and offical notices if you want a better flavor of this. Problems with apps might be 80% developers and 20% Facebook at this point. Also, Facebook is too busy rolling stuff out and fixing things to always notify developers of potential app breakers coming down the pike.

They do basic testing of apps during the approval process required to be listed in the directory, but you can imagine what that misses.

One problem is adapting your hosting plan to the viral growth rate. Developers are posting topics like "250,000 users - now what do I do?" That developer had nearly 700,000 one week later.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

Ben Newton — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:35:41 -0000

I added a flickr photo app today and it took 3 tries. Each time it went a little further in the process. It finally worked even though it stated there was an error. The appps developer blamed Facebook changing something in their app platform this morning. I find that hard to believe, but it may be true. There should b an approval process. Approved Facebbok Apps would be more appealing than installing and removing apps.

Re: The biggest problem for Facebook’s app platform

anon — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:01:48 -0000

The biggest problems with facebook applications is that a) 99% of them are indeed rubbish (food fight...?) and b) it gets mighty tiring ignoring all the invites to use them and seeing the notifications of "Jim added the 'this is b/s' application."

Is there a way to turn all this crap off without losing the decent notifications from your friends? At the moment I feel like I'm getting spammed with application rubbish every time I log in.