facebook apps

A team of mobile app developers offended by Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg dissing HTML5 have created a Facebook app that they say works better than native versions because of the HTML5 coding.

Tired of Facebook apps hoovering up all your personal information? Secure.me's App Advisor gives you the 411 on each app before you install it.

How well do Facebook apps protect your privacy? Before you download something new and agree to share information, check out how Privacyscore rates its first.

'Get the dislike button!' 'OMG this girl KILLED herself after her dad posted on her wall!' What do these comments have in common? They are two of the scams we see making the rounds on Facebook in an attempt to get you to click on and install a bad application. The Facebook con popping up everywhere this week is the 'total profile views' ruse. It's another version of the 'See who viewed your profile' trick that makes its way around the social network and plays to the user's ego and desire for information about who is checking out their Facebook page.

Think Facebook and productivity don't go together? Facebook time does not always equal wasted time. These four Facebook apps help you streamline and simplify your browsing, share documents with Facebook contacts and more.

People like me like to complain whenever Facebook does something that makes its once relatively private social network not so private any more. (As it has about 387 times since it opened its doors beyond colleges and high schools in late 2006.) But the worst offender isn't Facebook, its the apps that live and run on top of it.

Facebook launched a new applications feature late Tuesday that will let you test the latest tools the social network is working on. Called Facebook Prototypes, it's similar to Google Labs as it allows you to try out new features that, as Facebook says, are "not quite ready for prime time, are a bit esoteric, or don't quite fit."

Less than two years after Facebook opened its Web site to external developers, more than 52,000 applications have been created, a volume that is prompting the company to simplify how its members find these programs, according to a company official.

A growing number of those software developers who build Facebook applications say the complex Facebook ecosystem has hit real trouble, hurting large and small developers alike and dooming some shops that built businesses around the platform.