Daily Marauder

INDECENT EXPOSURE IN FACESPACE: APPLICATIONS

You know who you are.  Biting chumps, sucking blood. . . .you’ve obviously watched 28 Days Later one too many times.  Every morning, I awake with grand expectations from my social networking profile, only to find it bogged down in application requests to hug someone, drop kick your mom, fight your knight, take a quiz, buy you a drink, etc.

Stop the insanity! 

I do miss Susan Power’s self-help infomercials.  In this case, “Eat, Breathe, Move” should be changed to “Eat, Breathe, Stop Sending Random Application Requests.”

In May 2007, Facebook released the Facebook Platform allowing developers to create applications exponentially increasing the innovation available on the site.

In November 2007, Google responded by releasing Open Social, their APIs (application programming interfaces) for any social network site that supports them including MySpace.com, Friendster.com, and Hi5.com. 

The biggest difference between them:

Facebook’s API allowed developers to create applications for the Facebook environment alone as compared to Google’s Open Social which allowed developers to create applications on a variety of social networking platforms simultaneously.

To be very fair, Open Social has not quite delivered on this promise.  In the beginning, it only worked on Google-owned social networking site Orkut and not well to boot.

Back to the problem at hand.  Marathon application requests.

I attempted to take matters into my own hands by joining a group which I thought clearly demonstrated my disgust with the zombie/vampire/pirate/werewolf applications.  The biting continued.

To be very fair, I was an application whore myself and probably still am to some degree.  In the heat of adding that Sex and the City Which Character Are You? application, I sometimes feel compelled to send to my friends. 

Here’s the really brilliant part about applications.  They’re so successfully viral because of the way that sharing them personalizes the sender.  I send you some application bringing the hotness and maybe, just maybe. . .you’ll think I’m super awesome because I also love Gossip Girl quotes.

Personalization is the underlying force behind sharing of any kind and hateration aside, a force that I can get behind.  So share away, but maybe limit those zombie requests.  On the flipside of positive branding, some applications can have negative branding forces instead.  I’m now going to go Hug It Out with someone. 

Ah, application love.