Right upper corner or left lower corner? I sit here tapping my foot anxiously, trying to decide which square to choose on Facebook’s campusfood.com Feeding Friendzy. And there it is: that stupid little Zelda elf with the evil laugh. Game Over. I am sure many others have faced the extreme annoyance of trying to win money for campusfood.com on Facebook’s Application. Not too long ago, Facebook created a platform on their site to allow companies to create an “application” which Facebook users can utilize featuring games, music, and other sorts of entertainment. What makes this unique from other traditional ads is that Facebook users can choose whether or not to add this so called “app” and how much information to share with it, whether it is just registering with it for a quick use or putting it on your profile so other people can see it. Many of these applications also allow the user to invite their friends to participate in them. This social networking has generated great publicity for many companies.

In this article by CNet, many emerging companies and websites gathered at a conference for the same purpose: to create an application on Facebook. Companies just starting out, such as the website iLike which features a music discovery tool that allows friends to recommend different songs to each other have had skyrocketing traffic flow to their websites due to the use of the application by many people. While the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Facebook is a social network, Facebook is also an information network. In class we talked about how WebPages are seen as the nodes and links to other WebPages are the edges of an information network on the web. Here Facebook and its applications can be seen as a strongly connected component, where Facebook has an edge to all of its applications’ websites and each website has a link back to its application on Facebook. Each edge is a directed component because each edge only flows in one direction, with a separate edge to get back to the beginning. Example: On the Pandora Radio Facebook application (node), there is a link to pandora.com (edge). If you click on it, it will direct you to pandora.com (node) where you can find an advertisement on the right hand side of the radio to link your pandora.com music with Facebook (edge), directing you back to Facebook (starting node).

Another interesting feature about the Facebook applications as it related to our Networks Class can be seen in the campusfood.com application. This app lets you choose friends to play with (although it is not a competition), and if you win money on the game, they also win the same amount of money. There is also the chance to win a highly valued Wii video game console. Here it is interesting to analyze the payoffs of the game. How should I choose which person to play with? There are two options here: playing with a good friend or a casual acquaintance. If I play with a good friend and win money, then they also win money. This is not only beneficial to you by giving you the payoff of winning money, but also could increase your payoff by having your friend value you higher because you won them money or if you friend decides to be generous and use some of their money to buy you food. Here the chance of your friend buying you food is higher than the chance of just an acquaintance buying you food and the friend will appreciate you winning them money more than an acquaintance who probably doesn’t even remember your name. Also, since you won money for your friend, they will be more inclined to play with you and win you money in return. Since you can only play each friend a week, and play the game only five times a day, to maximize your payoff the best strategy would be best to play your good friends first and then work your way towards playing casual acquaintances. So the next time you are trying to decide which friend to play on Food Friendzy, remember to play your friends first.

While the amount of invitations you receive a week to add different applications on Facebook can seem outrageous and slightly annoying, remember that some of them are worth checking out. Not only could it lead you to a new website that could open you up to a new experience, but you and your friends may come into some money in the process.