What Apps - Reviews and profiles of social applications for Facebook, MySpace, and more.

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Facebook is finally starting to attract real companies that make real commercial quality applications. Playfish is one of those companies and Who Has The Biggest Brain? is one of those applications.

Playfish has raised the bar quite high for all Facebook apps with their new Who Has The Biggest Brain? game.

This game’s cute style, animation, graphics, music and sound not only add to the fun… they quickly demonstrate a Facebook application’s potential. Who Has The Biggest Brain? easily sets itself apart from the majority of Facebook apps that look like (and probably were) developed by high school kids.

 
 

They throw a few fun little brain tests at you, such as math or memory… You’re given a time limit and you must answer the questions as quickly as possible.

That might not sound like much fun, but they way they do it… it is fun — a lot of fun.

At the end of the game your results will be tallied up and your score will be compared to your friends.

Hrmm… I think I socred somewhere around “Neanderthal”. BRB, I’m gonna have to go play some more…

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My Personality by David Stillwell administers a brief psychological exam that is based off of a real psychological personality questionnaire used in actual scientific research. It offers a brief explanation of your results and allows you to compare your personality to your friends. I answered a minimal amount of questions to get an idea for how it works. You can answer over a hundred questions to get a more accurate psychological profile. As with any app of this nature, treat it truly as Just for Fun. That said, I felt it made a pretty accurate assessment of my personality.

When you’re done, it updates your profile with a nice little graph depicting elements of your personality. I really give them props for not spamming my profile page with unnecessaryily large banners. As their about page states,

MyPersonality is against Facebook spam and does not send any newsfeed stories or notifications without your prior approval. That means no mandatory “invite your friends” pages either!

You’re results are by default public and listed in their public diretory. Privacy settings can be changed to be more restrictive. Not only that, you can delete your personality profile, a feature most apps overlook.

Clicking on the “Compare to Friends” tab reveals my girlfriend is my soul mate! That’s a nice start. They apply a more involved formula for calculating your similarities, so it’s not just based on averages.

What makes this app also useful for dating is they offer a comprehensive personality search engine. You can find personality twins or specify you’re own criteria such as selecting from different personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) or various adjectives like calm, sensitive or reliable (many more). A quick search for my own personality twins pulled up 40 or so in my network.

I had a lot of fun playing with this app and would highly recommend it.

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Flirtable by Frengo is the ultimate Mass Flirt application. The way it works is simple: for every friend you invite, you get 20 flirts; for every profile you view or message, you get a single flirt; but for every person that flirts with you, you get 50 flirts! Flirts are like a currency. The more $$$ you have, the more people will notice you (the more your profile will be shown).

Users can customize their profiles by adding a custom tag line and selecting who they are interested in flirting with, such as Women aged “20-25”. Noticeably missing, however, is the ability to restrict the proximity of your flirtation. So, you might meet the girl of your dreams, but half way around the world. Guess that shouldn’t matter too much!

Their application screams. No lag whatsoever. You can quickly flip through hundreds of pictures just by clicking flirt or skip. Clicking on “Flirt” doesn’t require you to send any messages. It just adds the person to your list of flirts.

There’s not too much I would change about the application. It works really well as it stands. One thing that is ridiculously obnoxious is that they flood your mini feed EVERYTIME you send a flirt. In the future, I hope they add support to limit profiles by proximity and add more profile options to set yourself apart. Also, a “back” link would be nice, if you were a little quick on the trigger.

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With recent announcements the list of social networks all offering their own application platform is growing. Now we have APIs for Friendster, Bebo, LinkedIn, and more. This is obviously great for users and developers alike, but could also lead to a lot of frustration amongst developers having to manage several different platforms for their applications. This is where OpenSocial is was supposed to come in and save the day by providing a standard across many, many, many social networking sites. Nearly all of the major ones, except, you guessed it, Facebook.

For whatever reason Facebook wasn’t invited to this social. Left alone outside the party they decided, in traditional Facebook manner, to take matters into their own hands and have just announced today that they are willing to license the Facebook Application Platform to any social network who wants to integrate their methods and tags into their own system.

This is fantastic news for the already 100,000 plus Facebook developers because this means they’ll be able to make their Facebook applications available to other social networks with virtually no work at all. Suddenly OpenSocial isn’t looking so strong. However this all plays out, it’s sure to be a bumpy ride in the beginning as different networks battle it out over what will eventually become the de facto standards for application development. Has Facebook already won that title? Only time will tell.

For the full scoop from the horses mouth check out the announcement on the Facebook Developers Blog. For you developers out there, you’ll want to check out the Facebook FBML High-Level Technical Specification to find out the technical details.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think this is good news or bad news for developers? Will we see further market fragmentation or will it be a Facebook world? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: It looks like Bebo is already working with Facebook to implement the Facebook Platform Architecture and are announcing at their Bebo Platform launch event today that they are nearly 100% compatible with Facebook’s API, tags, queries, etc.

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AceBucks — “the largest underground currency for Facebook”.

The AceBucks is virtual currency and has no real value. It’s just that… virtual. So why would you want AceBucks? And what makes the 700,000+ people that have it installed want AceBucks?

Spending AceBucks

With AceBucks you can buy things, both real and virtual, through their store. Sweet!

I like alcohol, so I bought the “Cheers!” champagne glasses. Well not really. I bought the virtual “Cheers!” champagne glasses which just adds a picture to the AceBucks box in my profile.

I liked the large picture and would have liked to show it off in my profile, but all I get in my profile is this tiny thumb. Hardly seems worth my $12 AceBucks 🙁

Ok. Screw the virtual items then. Lets find some real ones…

There are a few real items worth buying on there as well, like a Nintendo WII or this XBOX 360 I found…

Earning AceBucks

So now that you’ve found something you want… how do you earn AceBucks?

First signing up will get you $125 AceBucks, inviting friends will get you $5 AceBucks and $25 AceBucks if they actually join. There are also 11 different Faceboook games that reward you with AceBucks. (yes AceBucks has an API). You can earn additional AceBucks with 3rd party offers from companies like NetFlix, PetSmart, Disney, Walmart, etc. Signing up for newsletters will earn you AceBucks. You can also sell your own items for AceBucks.

AceBucks Problems

The AceBucks application is pretty cool, but it’s not without it’s flaws.

You cannot convert your AceBucks into dollars or dollars into AceBucks. This makes it incredibly difficult to ever afford the expensive stuff.

People do auction off US Dollars (USD). So you could “buy” $50 USD for X amount of AceBucks. But this brings me to yet another problem.

There’s no way to tell what is a real tangible item that will be shipped to my door. All auctions are marked with either “real” or “virtual”. But I’ve found way too many virtual items being sold as real items.

I can afford 2 REAL Ferrari’s With my current AceBucks balance!

It’s easy to tell that this Ferrari is not a real Ferrari just by looking at the price. But other items that have their AceBucks price closer to their actual value are not so easy to identify.

It’s very possible you will end up buying a “real” item and receive just a picture of it.

There are also a few “questionable” auctions. Auctions for AceBucks lottery or AceBucks raffles where you could “win” more AceBucks should be banned.

Summary

These problems prevent AceBucks from earning any rating higher than 3 stars. It probably even should have earned a 2 star rating. Though I gave it a 3 star because I feel like this application has potential. And maybe you can buy some neat stuff with the AceBucks you earn from playing games. Just don’t cry when all your AceBucks get scammed away from you.

You can work around the real/virtual problem by contacting the buyer about the item (still no guarantee that you’ll be scammed). But eventually AceBucks needs to offer some sort of guarantee on real items if they want this to be legit.

AceBucks also needs to figure out a way to convert AceBucks into USD and vice-versa. I can’t think of anything I’d want to sell for a currency only used to buy pictures.

If they do nothing else but resolve these issues, AceBucks would easily be a 5 star application with the potential of growing larger than their current Facebook scope.

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Looking for a place to rent? Need a roommate desperately? Check out a new app for Facebook called Roomster. It lets you easily post classified ads and search for a room or apartment to rent. In my experience, the best places to rent have always come from word of mouth. I’ve tried using Craigslist, but came across a lot of weirdos in the process. The Facebook platform is perfect for this purpose.

You can filter your search by multiple dimensions. How many other sites let you actually find roommates by Zodiac? Unfortunately, the the filtering system is a little bit limited and only lets you filter results by a single dimension at a time, so narrowing your search is not a possibility. For example, filtering by “Women seeking rooms”, then “25-35” returns a bunch of guys between “25-35” looking for rooms to rent, but no women. Since this site revolves around search, I think this is a significant short coming.

One thing Roomster impressed me with was the sheer number of results they returned for a roommate search in Los Angeles. The results seem to be current and members active, which is a problem with many websites I’ve used in the past that are cluttered with old listings. Once they add the ability to narrow a search, this is definitely a 4-star app. If anyone’s found a roommate or apt using this service, leave a comment!

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It looks like Facebook has four different pillow fight applications. Though I’m only going to review the one that has 84,635 daily active users. That many users means it’s good, right?

Unfortunately, no. The only thing you can do is invite friends (of course) or throw a pillow at your friends.

Pillow Fight! could have been cool if they did something like display an animation of you getting hit with a pillow or anything at all really.

Sadly, all your friends will get is a bland message like the one below…

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Twisted Christmas is yet another one of those “send virtual gifts to your friends” applications… but of course, with a twist.

You select a character that best represents you. I chose Choclato.

This app doesn’t have an “invite friends” feature like the others… you go Christmas caroling. You select your from a couple dozen different Christmas carols (Christmas YouTube videos), select your friends and it will blast out the video to them with their invitation.

There are also a few dozen different gifts you can give to your friends. They vary from the standard candy cane to the gift I sent my girlfriend — yep… poop in a box. I’m expecting something special in return.

poop in a box

There’s not a whole lot of depth to this application and you’ll most-likely uninstall it after xmas. But the cute graphics they have make it fun and hey… it’s almost Christmas.

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TopNetPix provides a way of efficiently displaying all your favorite links on your profile as a cluster of Favicons. When you click on any one of the icons, it takes you to the site. Another feature is that you can link all social networking profiles to your Facebook profile (e.g. Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Hi5).

The interface is real easy to use. They also provide a lot of preconfigured links like (Google News, CNN, The Onion, etc.).

If this is all it did, I would be happy with the application. The problem is they automatically add 3 of their own links as my favorites. But they aren’t my favorites. What’s worse, they don’t even let me remove them. I really, really don’t like any application misrepresenting my endorsements.

See those first 3 links? I didn’t chose those. More over, I don’t endorse them. Also, I’d love if they got rid of their top banner, which just takes up unnecessary space. If a person likes the app, they can click on the link below the icons.

It looks like this app was just designed to drive traffic to their other properties and not to enhance the Facebook user experience. For this reason, I promptly uninstalled the application.

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From Console to Social Application

Electronic Arts, Inc. (“EA”), publishers of praticly every major video game released in the past few years have recently set their sights on Facebook. Could this spell trouble for the little guys or is EA just dipping their toes in hoping to pick up a few more sales?

I had the pleasure of playing a new trivia game for the Nintendo Wii called Smarty Pants over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Developed by EA, with over 22,000 questions and interesting game play that involves such gestures as actually having to raise your hand with the Wii remote to buzz in answers, Smarty Pants is a definite party pleaser. Arguably not the best video game, not even close, it does have the distinct advantage of being the only game in the trivia genre for the Nintendo Wii at the time being. These two factors alone tend to earn it an average 6.5/10 rating by most console video game reviewers.

Smarty Pants for the Wii was released on November 15th and retails for around $49.99 but can be picked up for as low as $24.99 if you’re a Black Friday bargain hunter. Not a bad deal until you discover that you can play Smarty Pants on Facebook with all of your friends for free!

Smarty Pants for Facebook is not quite the entire game, but depending on who you ask this may be an advantage. The somewhat repetitive and annoying intermissions that you religiously pound the A-button to skip through on the Wii are lacking on its Facebook clone. Instead it gets right down to the nitty gritty of serving up a buffet of trivia questions at a heart pounding pace that will make you pull your hair out.

In the Facebook version of Smarty Pants you start a new game by inviting all of your friends that you wish to challenge. Each game consists of 10 random trivia questions from several categories that include; art, books, entertainment, fashion, games, places and people, science, and sports. Each player takes his or her turn answering the same set of 10 questions conveniently on their own time. Once you start answering though there is a very fast clock that counts down each question. The longer you take the answer each question, the difficulty of the question, and the correctness of your answer all contribute towards the points you earn. The player with the most points per game is the winner.

The Smarty Pants Facebook port was developed by social application development house, Context Optional, Inc. for EA. The “smarty pants” over at Context Optional, Inc. are well versed in developing viral applications for Facebook and their expertise is very noticeable in Smarty Pants. One such viral feature involves upgrading a pair of so called smarty pants that each player starts off. As players earn more points they level up and acquire upgraded pants and “bling” to match them. The higher the level of pants you possess the more bragging rights you have. Your pants are proudly on display in your Smarty Pants Profile Box and every upgrade is broadcast to your Mini-Feed. Discovering the different pairs of pants you can earn, like clown pants, can be entertaining at first but eventually feels too aggressive at the pace in which they are earned and broadcast.

The Result

Overall as a trivia game Smarty Pants for Facebook is very entertaining, the clock is fast and sends your heart racing trying to compete against your friends scores. Some users have complained on the forums that the questions were too targeted towards US residents, especially the sports related questions, so they have made an effort to strike a better balance for foreigners by reducing the number of sports related questions. This is just one of the many issues that Context Optional, Inc. had to overcome while porting Smarty Pants from the Wii to Facebook.

The game obviously serves as one giant advertisement for the Wii version with its noticible banner on every page but I would have to say that I’ve probably had more fun competing with all of my friends on Facebook than I have playing it on the Wii. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Facebook version does more harm than good for EA by cannabilizing sales of Smarty Pants. Not an uncommon problem for third party services who try to draw Facebook users onto their own services only to find out that their Facebook application performs better than their standalone application. Context Optional, Inc. did a beautiful job in porting Smarty Pants to Facebook, perhaps too good of a job.

With the recent formation of Social Gaming Network (SGN) by Webs to focus entirely on creating games for the social graph will we start to see behemoths like EA entering this space soon? With the success of Smarty Pants for Facebook I think the game is about to change.

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