Not too long ago, very few media companies had invested time in creating Facebook applications. But with the millions of registered users visiting the site every day, there has been a rush to be a part of Facebook profiles everywhere. Examples of great Facebook apps include Time Magazine's Quote of the Day app, The New York Times News Quiz (which has roughly 1,500 unique users a day), and InStyle.com's Hollywood Hair Makeover (about 3,300 daily users). All of these infuse an element of fun into journalism and have an element that keeps Facebook users coming back.



Building a Facebook application is still very much for those with technical knowhow, but there are a few third party applications making the process easier. First, start off with this post from Tony Hirst that details a few of said applications, including Dapper Facebook AppMaker.

It's never to late to create a winning Facebook app, according to Stanford instructors Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure. Some of their other musings: "simplicity and clarity are the key to app success" and "copying success is a cheap/fast way to succeed." I couldn't agree more.

Nevertheless, the abundance of applications are quickly turning Facebook profiles into the poorly designed pages of its rival MySpace. I did want to share though a personal favorite of mine: Flog Blog. The neat little app lets users add RSS feeds to their Facebook profiles, should their favorite blog not already have a Facebook application. I, of course, use it to keep friends updated about 10,000 words.

Facebook and MySpace are of course two of the hundreds, if not thousands, of social networks floating around the web. But what other social networks are popular around the web? According to this map Orkut is popular in Brazil and India, hi5 is popular in Portugal, Mongolia and Peru, and Blogger is a hit in France and Pakistan.

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