• Advertising Age, Thursday, January 29, 2009 11:30 AM

Most Facebook apps, including those that allow you to send zombies, vampires and sheep to friends, are a colossal waste of time. They also cause clutter. Thankfully, Facebook's redesign relegated many of these apps to other sections of the site. This made it tougher for developers and brands to launch new apps successfully.

Advertising Age contributor Ian Schafer warns that before you write-off Facebook apps as just another passing fad, consider Facebook Connect, which he says spawns "a new breed of app that may very well be more powerful than several poking and parking apps combined." Why? Because these apps are meant to facilitate connections, not waste time. "It's what they help you do, not what they do themselves," says Schafer. "And they represent the first entrants into the next great Facebook app war."

Schafer uses the example of a user-reviewed restaurant on Citysearch.com. As a member of Facebook Connect, Citysearch can instantly show that restaurant review to that user's Facebook friends, as long as he or she agrees to grant both sites permission to share your data. Once the user grants permission, the published review appears on his or her Facebook profile and in the newsfeed of many of his or her friends. This, Schafer says, marks the best way to realize the potential of Facebook's social graph.

Read the whole story at Advertising Age »