The Best Facebook Frictionless Sharing Apps So Far

When Mark Zuckerberg announced at f8 last September that Facebook would be expanding its Open Graph to do more than just ‘Like’, we didn’t know exactly how this would be fused with our profiles. Facebook want us to share as much as possible, such as what movies we’re watching, what songs we’re listening to, what books we’re reading and so on. Zuckerberg describes it as ‘Frictionless Sharing’ – a way of apps integrating with your Timeline seamlessly.

Last week, Facebook unveiled 60 apps that would be seamlessly integrated into users profiles, and some of these apps are a great way to truly personalise your Timeline. So with Facebook making Timeline compulsory for all users, there’s no better time to run through some of the best apps so far.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a fantastic way of personalising your timeline by showing your style, humour, fashion sense, interests and other things you love. Each time you ‘Like’ or ‘Re-pin’ something on Pinterest, as well as creating your own boards and pins on Pinterest.com, it gets automatically added to your Timeline (Twitter sharing is also integrated here). What’s best about Pinterest and all of these Timeline apps is the little box that gets automatically stuck onto your timeline, giving a glimpse of the past few items you have Liked/Read/Watched.

Facebook seem to be reserving the right side of your Timeline for these Apps, thereby leaving the left side free for all the content from you and your friends – wall posts etc. A nice design choice, considering the possible information overload there could have been.

The Guardian

One of the most revered news organisations in the world have built a great app that replicates their famous website very faithfully. You are only asked once to install and approve the app and from then on, every single story you read will be pushed to your friends ticker and onto your Timeline. A strange concept to adjust to initially, but it becomes second nature if you read a lot of articles during the day.

If one of your friends is reading/watching an article, you will see a handy little ‘Read/Watch’ icon in your ticker, letting you go straight to the story. The Guardian aren’t the only newspaper trying to become the coveted social news leader - The Washington Post Social reader has already become a massive hit, as has Yahoo! News and The Independent.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud shows you all the music your friends are listening to, letting you immediately listen to that very song or playlist your friends are. Already, it is proving to be a great way to find some unexpectedly great artists and user-created playlists. Spotify and Rdio have also got great apps with solid Facebook integration.

As with most of these Timeline apps, it’s very early days, but music apps have the potential to be massive when more people flood in and start engaging with them.

Foodily

For those of the culinary persuasion, Foodily is a must have. It is integrated with foodily.com by asking you what you want to cook. It shows what your friends are cooking and what they like. It’s a great way of finding new recipes and ingredients. As usual, your activity is shown in your friends’ news feed.

Foodily is a lovely app but it’s one that I can’t see myself using as much as others, for the simple fact that it’s not as natural as say, listening to a song or reading a story with an app.

Rotten Tomatoes by Flixster

Rotten Tomatoes one of the largest aggregators of movie reviews in the world and they have done a fantastic job of merging their massive website together with Timeline. At rottentomatoes.com, you can login with one click, and immediately see what your friends have watched, rated or recommended. If you see a movie you have recently watched, you can rate it or Like it. Once you have rated a movie, it’s automatically posted onto your Timeline in a little section dedicated only to Rotten Tomatoes.

Overall, apps for Timeline are a massive leap forward for Facebook’s Open Graph and for users. If you compare and contrast Timeline to the profile pages we had just six months ago, the difference is incredible. We have masses of rich, dynamic content, accessed on our Timeline with real ease and organised very well.

As Timeline rolls out to everyone, we will only see these apps grow as more developers and companies start to take advantage of the huge reach they can have. We have only scratched the surface with how these apps are merging with our profiles.

For some, the idea of Frictionless sharing is fantastic – approve once and everything you do from then on will be pushed to your Timeline, making it much easier to share and enjoy content with your friends. For others, it will no doubt add more discontent regarding Facebook and privacy issues. For example, does every user know that everything they watch, read or listen to is being shared with their friends? For those who are uneasy with all of this sharing, every app can be removed from your profile so that nothing will be shared.

There is no doubt that Facebook are rapidly moving towards their goal of open sharing and tight integration with the entire web, it’s up to each user to decide how much they want shared. If you want to try out some of the launch apps, go onto the Facebook apps page and see what’s on offer.