Top 10 Facebook Apps

An essential part of what makes Facebook such an addictive pursuit is the apps. There are apps to go shopping, apps to follow organizations and sports teams, and apps to entertain you for hours. Of course, the best apps allow you to share the experience with your friends. Here are the 10 you need to know about.

Bartab

Bartab

This app lets you send real drinks to friends for $1. Drinks are redeemed at participating bars by showing your friend’s cell phone version of Facebook to the bartender.

Causes

Causes

An official Facebook app, Causes lets users connect with the non-profit organizations that they support. The app creates a mini-profile within the app that shows you at a glance what organizations you’ve donated time, energy, or cash toward.

Citizen Sports

Citizen Sports

In concert with Yahoo Sports, this app connects you with other sports fan friends, and brings you the latest news, live scores, and trivia for your favorite teams. Plus, through the app you can participate in fantasy teams and bracket challenges.

Daily Horoscope

Daily Horoscope

This entertaining app connects you to those of your friends who share your sign, and offers insights into how the movement of the planets will impact your day. Or not.

Farmville

Farmville

The Zynga app phenomenon of Farmville really helped jumpstart the Facebook marketplace for virtual goods. There are more than 500 million acres of virtual farmland being worked by more than 60 million people. They can’t all be wrong.

Flixter

Flixter

Share your movie loves, hates, and wishes through this app. Plus, Flixter offers details on flicks that are coming soon, in theaters, and new to DVD.

Marketplace

Marketplace

This Marketplace lets you sell, give away, buy, rent, ask, and search real local things on the virtual social network. You can also support charities by selling things for a cause.

Picnik

Picnik

With this app you can edit your photos without leaving the social network. Picnik lets you crop, rotate, resize, fix colors, expo-sure, and red eye. You can even add special effects, or add your Picasa Web Album pics to your Facebook Photos.

Scrabble

Scrabble

While it has faced stiff competition from upstart apps such as Words with Friends, the original word game is still worth checking out on Facebook. The app allows you to challenge friends and 570,000 other fans of the game to a war of wits.

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor

By enabling this app, you can create an interactive, sharable travel map of places you’ve been or are going. You can also see your friends’ most popular destinations and recent travel activity.

Anna Attkisson
Managing Editor
A lover of lists and deadlines, Anna Attkisson heads up features and special projects for Laptopmag.com, in addition to covering social networking and accessories. She joined the LAPTOP staff in 2007, after working at Time Inc. Content Solutions where she created custom publications for companies from American Express to National Parks Foundation.