Facebook’s basic idea is rather confusing for new social network users. Is that a place to communicate with your friends and family, a place to promote yourself and your company, a place to link to funny and interesting websites that you’ve found on the internet, or a place to “kill” some time by playing one of the available games with your friends? In short, Facebook is all of this and more. With over half a billion virtual “neighbours”, it’s clear that this is the biggest online community. The interesting fact, however, that sets Facebook apart from all other social networks, is the sheer number of available applications. While the simple user interface has attracted users worldwide, the simple API (Application Programming Interface) has attracted independent programmers and development teams to create Facebook applications. Owing to Facebook’s rapid expansion, this social network now contains around 600,000 applications.

CAFÉ WORLD

Just like Farmville, Mafia Wars and YoVille, Café World is a Zynga product, and one of their most elaborate ones at that. The plot (if you can call it that way) begins when you’ve opened your own restaurant in Café World. Firstly, you need to find and employ those among your friends who are willing to work in your restaurant. Once you’ve sorted out the staff problem, you can direct all your attention to your customers’ satisfaction. At the very beginning, you can’t fit more than a few people into your pub, but as your business grows, so will your clientele. You’re free to buy additional extensions later on in order to be able to accept even more customers and improve your business. This game has reached enormous levels of popularity thanks to its excellent support team and daily updates that the authors pump out. If you’re one for micromanagement, this is the game for you, and one you should try regardless of your café (or coffee) preferences.

FARMVILLE

Unless you’ve spent the last three years in a cave or under a rock, far away from civilisation, it’s impossible that you haven’t heard of Farmville. With over 20 million daily users, this application flooded Facebook just months after its initial appearance. Farmville is an application in which you can develop your virtual farm, breed all sorts of animals, trade with other virtual farmers and improve your farming household. Once you’ve earned a sufficient quantity of Farmville money, you can spend it on new animals, machinery or auxiliary objects. The competitive spirit is ever-present, owing to levels and points that you collect as the game progresses. Farmville creators update the game daily with new animals, tools and add-ons, so that the game doesn’t bore you any time soon. Farmville is an excellent answer to the question why people spend so much of their time on Facebook.

MAFIA WARS

If you adored gangster films when you were young, here’s a game for your appetite. In Mafia Wars, you can become the true virtual Vito Corleone himself! The plot of the game comes down to the necessity of gathering a gang and using your revolver to get to the throne of this criminal empire. The race with time begins as soon as you’ve made your first Mafia Wars character, and you’ll need to log into your Mafia Wars account often in order not to get killed. This is one of the reasons why so many users are addicted to this game. The user interface is a bit confusing, but worth the time needed to get used to it, as the game will provide you with hours and hours of fun.

VAMPIRE WARS

Vampire Wars is a Gothic-themed game, putting the player into a vampire world. This game is also signed by Zynga, which means that fun is guaranteed. Vampire Wars puts you in the role of a young vampire, which has to gather as many minions as possible. You gather minions among your Facebook friends first and foremost. Once you’ve assembled a vampire clan, you can buy weapons and add-ons for it. The game and battle concept is reminiscent of Mafia Wars, which means that it’s a tried-and-true recipe to success, bar the different theme. An excellent game with a penchant for the dark side.

CAUSES

This application is a bit more serious in nature than the previously mentioned ones, which were primarily fun in character. This is a Facebook application that unites people with a common cause. Causes enable you to present your cause to a group of similarly-inclined individuals. The cause itself can be anything, from the clichés such as “Save the whales”, all the way to very concrete causes for helping people needing surgery etc. Causes enable you to either create your own cause or join an existing one. The advantage of causes is that, unlike ordinary Facebook groups and pages, they don’t choke people in information of little importance. You can’t send mass-messages to people, but you can inform them via their Facebook wall about an upcoming action or future event. The important thing is that Causes is no mere empty talk, and that the Foundation for fighting cancer, for example, collected over five million dollars last year using only this application.

MINDJOLT

There’s no Facebook user without at least a bit of a penchant for online games. MindJolt’s authors were fully aware of this fact, so they enabled Facebook users to access thousands of online games directly from their Facebook profiles. The games in question are mostly classic games and their clones, such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man, but that isn’t to say that there are no interesting new games, mostly platform-based, with an atmosphere worthy of a standalone PC games. Owing to an advanced ranking system, each game has the option of comparing you against other players. Although it’s replete with ads, MindJolt’s simple user interface and thousands of available games will offer you days and weeks of fun.

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TEXAS HOLD’EM POKER

So, you like Texas Hold’em, but you aren’t too confident in your skills, or at least not enough to play for actual money? Or perhaps you want to perfect your skills additionally before switching onto the real thing? Either way, Zynga’s (what a surprise) Texas Hold’em Poker will give you the feeling of being in a proper poker game, from the comfort of your own chair. f you’re playing poker for yourself, the game feeling just isn’t right, as you can’t lose anything except for a few funny money dollars. However, if you’re playing with real people sitting around the same (virtual) table as yourself, the competitive spirit strikes in. This is exactly what this Zynga game is trying to accomplish, you playing with your friends and new people. You can play the game at several virtual locations, and the game rooms are numerous enough to assure that you can connect to and with people easily. Interesting graphics and excellent atmosphere put this game right at the top of virtual gambling games. Therefore, don’t wait any longer - check if you can pull a bluff on some of your friends in the typical Texas Hold’em style.

PHRASES

If you have a friend who likes to repeat film quotes all the time, here’s a way to make his day. Phrases enable you to create mini-applications that display a random answer to a predefined question. You can create separate answers for men and women, and if you like the answer, you can post it onto your wall. The number of Phrases applications is unlimited, and the creativity of the answers relies entirely upon you. Some of the currently popular Phrases circling around Facebook are “What does Chuck Norris have to tell you?” and “Fortune cookie”.

COMPARE HOTNESS

Compare Hotness has access to your profile pictures. Your photos and the photos of another, randomly picked user are put to the sight of a third user, which then chooses which one he/she prefers. You can set the application so that only people of the opposite sex can rate you, you can rate people of both sexes, and you’re even able to see which of the users you’ve beaten (or lost to). After a few dozen ratings, you’ll probably close this application, but if you happen to have a good score (Compare Hotness rates you against your friends, not all application users), you can even put a Compare Hotness badge on your Facebook profile and let everyone know how well you look (i.e. how good you are in Photoshop).

WHO HAS THE BIGGEST BRAIN?

Who Has the Biggest Brain puts you to a series of tests which contain mathematical, logical, visual and memory tasks. The total score is calculated by adding up the points from all four categories, yielding a total “brain rating”. In accordance with your test results, the application will reward you with an appropriate picture, ranging from a monkey with a banana, over a scientist, cyborg, alien, all the way to various creatures from outer space. The app also offers to pin the badge onto your profile page, so that you can boast around with how clever you are.

YOVILLE

This game is aiming at your personal failures. Although this may seem repulsive at first, it’s much fun in fact. The key to this game’s success is that people like virtual worlds where they can be anything they want to be, and this is exactly what YoVille provides. In YoVille, you can create a better, improved version of yourself and your life. Inside the YoVille world, all your fantasies are at hand. If you’ve ever wanted to be a successful film director that lives in a luxurious villa, a fighter for justice and truth, or simply have the job of your dreams and live an ordinary life, no problem, everything that you need to do is make a YoVille account. Unlike the tense Mafia Wars, YoVille has a relaxing effect on the player. You won’t run short of virtual money, and constant improvements and updates will make you play this game for a long, long time.