There is a backlash circulating against all the spammy new FB applications that are being released. There are over 200 groups (I stopped counting after that) specifically dedicated to campaigning that FB somehow limit the number of spammy requests people receive from these so-called ‘applications’.

Do a search ‘when its working’ for ‘applications’ in groups and take a look at the groups that come up, the first 200 results are large groups against FB apps.

It's VERY clear that there is a LARGE group of FB users who are sick to death with the apps themselves and their spammy requests.

Considering applications are the new Viagra for the internet and Open Social is all the rave, it might just turn out that it’s not that ’social’ after all to have the whole world making apps…

Some are estimating that there is a large percentage of people turning away from FB, as they also did from Myspace as they transformed into Myspam.

What does this mean for Open Social and FB? Well Google are in a win win situation, as it if works they win and if it fails they loose nothing, but the same is not so true for FB. They could quickly degrade into the latest Myspam and in doing so will open the door for the next social 'dating' network!

So far I have only seen a few apps that are worth adding, the cities I've been one and the sexy-girls one. Other than that I think most are tripe. Don't get me wrong, there is a market to be had here, but better filtering is in order to protect users against some of these join this app request. Many apps are building unique invite all your friends widgets that don't allow you to opt them out. This alone should be banned.

There are two other aspects that need addressing. Many apps require you to join them before you get a glance as to what they do or are about, it should be made mandatory that people can see what an app does before being forced to join (this only requires the removal of 2 lines of code).

Also many apps once you join, they stuff their shit into your profile pages, this should require a separate request option that has to be accepted before they spam your profile. However, there is currently an oversight in the FB API for if you want to offer a member the option of placing the app into their profile, there is no way in the core code that you can check if it has been added, thus apps have no way of knowing if you can remove that option from their sight. Small points but all these factors would make the terrain less spammy and increase loyalty to the whole.

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