Tech Crunch recently reported that they noticed the Top Friends Application has disappeared from users profile pages. We also noticed that the application is no longer in the application directory.

A hugely popular Slide application called Top Friends has simply vanished from Facebook’s site. Users who had installed it don’t see it, searches for it in the directory turn up empty, and the URL for the application now redirects to the Facebook home page. It’s like it never existed.

CNET recently reported that it had the answer

Until Facebook suspended the Top Friends app, created by Slide, anyone could browse partial profiles of anyone else on Facebook who had added Top Friends to their page. CNET News.com confirmed that the security hole exposed the birthdays, gender, and relationship status of strangers, including Facebook executives, the wife of Google co-founder Larry Page, and one profile that seemed to belong to Paris Hilton. Basically, the app was not obeying the privacy settings specified by the user, enabling anyone with the know-how to bypass the security once they obtained someone’s Facebook ID number.

Recent stats on top friends:

DESI Tags, by Sanjay Aggarwal, Ravi Shankar a facebook application which allows you to tag your friends. The application is really very sleek and cute. The tags are associated with cute caricatures which make the whole process more funny and desirable.

Some of the tags are… solid anda, shy tomato, chalak lombdi, computer dimag, Maggie noodles, Einstein ke baap, pressure cooker, latoo in love, bijli ka khamba, aag ka gola and it just goes onn.
You can also tag multiple friends at the same time. The Desi Tags features about 50 such tags.

http://apps.facebook.com/desitags/

InsideSocialWeb Review:

The facebook applications main catch is the funky tags & the caricatures. The application plays its tagging part very nicely but there is a chance that people will get bored with the same tags so developers need to keep on constantly keep adding more tags.T he User Engagement for the application is moderate but it can heat up if they let people upload their own tags. The app could also put in some general tags and reach a global audience instead of restricting them to just India. All in all a great start with a unique idea could go a really long way if they remove the “India” only limitation.

InsideSocialWeb Rating:

User Interface:- 3/5
Concept/Idea:- 4/5
User Engagement:- 3/5
Overall Rating: 3.3/5

Zoomtra.com is an online travel marketplace that enables travel sellers (airlines, hotels, tour providers and others) to promote their deals with real time pricing to interested buyers has launched a Facebook Application focused on Travel in India, the first of its kind in the country. This application named, “India Dekha” was conceptualised and has been launched with the objective of analysing and understanding social networking in the travel space.

On “India Dekha”, Facebook users can create a personalised travel map by marking places and writing about past travel experience and places they aspire to go. Furthermore, one can share and compare the map with his ‘friend network’ on Facebook.

InsideSocialWeb Review:

The best thing which I liked about the application was ability to add review for individual restaurants,night spots and shopping places from the city. The application does take its references from similar apps made for other countries. The application uses google maps widely and it could do a lot if the user base increases to a good extent.

The app would be much better if the user would get the choice of plotting destinations directly on the map. App could have used the recent datastore API for facebook to get the star ratings..

The main features
- hometown
-has been to
-wants to go
don’t look good if added in large amounts (for a more frequent travel person the destinations are quite large) and it looks quite chaotic then…. perhaps a more better representation would have been great.

Although you could get bored with the application after a certain point of time, they company might have to do much to keep the user engagement level of the app. I see zoomtra doing their best by having different business strategies in place like the one currently on the app which says “Invite your friends to use India Dekha and you can win upto 3 Gift Vouchers. Start inviting now!”

All in all a very good effort and most importantly a complete application and definitely one which I would like to have on my profile…I might be wrong on stating they are first facebook application but its the first one i stumbled upon facebook.

InsideSocialWeb Rating:

User Interface:- 3/5
Concept/Idea:- 3/5
User Engagement:- 3/5
Overall Rating: 3/5

BigTree Entertainment, the company that launched the online movie and events ticketing portal, BookMyShow.com, has launched its maiden facebook application.

The social web app allows you to show movies to your friends, absolutely free!

Faltoo Flicks brings you the very best of B, C and D grade bollywood entertainment. You can send the wholesome goodness of bad movies to your friends. Passion, lust, action, emotion, comedy and tragedy, there’s a movie for everyone.

The concept is to share movies such as Bichhoo, Bhookha Sher and Adi Manav and have a laugh with friends. The application is created and designed by the digital agency, Webchutney. The inspiration behind this app was “Everybody talks about popular films, but nobody writes about movies that are bad. So we thought of giving viewers a platform to fret about bad movies and see what they say about them!” The Faltoo Flicks page features about 70 such movies.

InsideSocialWeb Review:

The facebook applications main catch is the funky movie names and the descriptions. The application is more towards “play a prank on your friend” types and the fun does not last long. The User Engagement for the application is very less since the movies are limited and there is nothing much to do other than booking a ticket for your friends. The application does play the prank really well and the navigation and the interface is really polished. The app could do more on orkut than facebook for a straight fact that the number of Indian users on facebook is really less ? 496,000 as I review this.

All in all a great start with a unique idea.could go a really long way if they could work on the user engagement part.

InsideSocialWeb Rating:

User Interface:- 3/5
Concept/Idea:- 3/5
User Engagement:- 2/5
Overall Rating: 2.6/5