DISQUS

Michael Fagan · 2 years ago

I don't think a saturation point has been reached at all. Facebook apps are in reality, websites. Have we reached the saturation point for websites?

To me this just feels like 1999 with tons of useless sites on Geocities. Within the crowd, though, some have real value ( http://apps.facebook.com/carpool/ ) and I think that over time this will sort itself out.

The directory itself will probably be useless in not too long, just as web directories like Yahoo and DMOZ are essentially unused now, in favour of search engines.

Sam · 2 years ago

I'm going to disagree. For example, today a PayPal application was launched, which is pretty revolutionary. The combined reputation and security of PayPal and Facebook could really take non-shopping online payment mainstream. I think more and more it's the established companies that are going to take the time (and have the expertise) to build great application. Another example would be Yahoo!'s new music videos application, which is incredibly well done. It's going to be hard for non-corporations to compete with this kind of quality. If this is a good or bad thing is up for debate, but I don't thinik we've hit a saturation point as it will take more time for well thought out applications to be launched.

Nick O'Neill · 2 years ago

Yeah I'm getting hammered on this one. I guess my train of thought was more along the lines that there is a saturation of crappy applications. Initially people were adding just about anything they could find but that rapidly ended.

I think that the web directory analogy is a good one and that's ultimately what i'm experiencing. There are so many bad applications that it's getting more difficult to filter out the bad ones.

Maybe I'm just having application directory overload.

Sam · 2 years ago

Yeah--I definitely agree with the web directory analogy. I don't think they've done a good enough job of giving users the tools to find applications. Facebook should be able to make recommendations based on what you've added so far (in the same way that Google Sidebar recommends gadgets) or a list of the applications most popular among your friends. Right now, for example, having 30 straight applications for hockey team news makes it difficult to really get to what new applications have just been launched. The "Recently Popular" doesn't really work very well either, I don't think.

Minger · 2 years ago

From the vantage point of someone scouring the apps universe, of course you'll encounter tons of crap. Look at all the detritus polluting sourceforge. The good ones bubble up to the profiles of your non-scouring friends. A lot of these apps are written by one or two man teams of high school or college students as toys or learning experiments. "Crap" can be reframed as homework being done by a rising generation by developers. The more polished apps of the second, third, fourth, and successive waves can exploit this self-taught developer base.