Notes from Nothing

Who let the community in… to rate Facebook apps?

Summary: Jeremy Toeman puts together AppRate, a facebook community rating site — Top 10 community rated apps on Facebook — features of AppRate


from l – r: Justin (Justin.tv) and Jeremy Toeman (Source: Brian Solis)

My good friend Jeremy Toeman, over at Live Digitally, just created a community based Facebook Application rating system at AppRate.com. And, he’s also created a nifty little Facebook app that allows you to display the Top 10 community rated apps on Facebook as well (requires Facebook sign-in).

Last week I rolled up the sleeves, dusted off the old PHP memories, and got a little down and dirty to take a swing at a new site called AppRate.com. While watching people like Scoble, Mario Sundar, and Dave McClure add and remove about 40 applications per day (just kidding guys) on Facebook, I was getting curiouser and curiouser as to which were the “good” applications, versus the bad and the ugly. But Facebook’s “review” system is really just a meaningless comments board.

So I decided to build my own, and distribute the power back to the community. On our side, we add the applications to the site, throw in a screenshot, a little blurb, a link, and our rating. The rest is up to you. Voting is totally open with no registration needed – I’m hoping that empowering the community will overwhelm anyone’s urges to game the system. The site automatically calculates the top scoring and most voted-on items. In addition, anyone can easily add comments, although first-comments need moderation due to the power of the spambot world.

I’ve been dabbling in quite a few of these entertaining social apps over on Facebook. As I’d blogged before, I find their movie, music and some of the random leisure apps quite fascinating. Jeremy’s initiative, AppRate, reminds me of a cross between Appsaholic (a Facebook stats app) and All Facebook (a blog which chronicles the various fast growing apps on Facebook, which also allows Apps rating since 7/17) with the difference in the fact that not only does AppRate throw in community rating but also allows for the collective vote displayed on Facebook. Basically, AppRate democratizes the process of ranking Facebook apps and announces the results on Facebook. Sweet!

Let’s take a quick look at the highest rated community rated apps on AppRate right now. From Super Mario to Strippers and Pirates! “Why I like this app?”, after the jump…

Free NES 4.67 out of 54.67 out of 54.67 out of 54.67 out of 54.67 out of 5
Honesty Box 4.29 out of 54.29 out of 54.29 out of 54.29 out of 54.29 out of 5
Urbanspoon 4 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 5
Graffiti 3.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 5
Sentence Game 3.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 53.8 out of 5
Causes 3.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 5
Sonic Living 3.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 53.5 out of 5
Pirates vs. Ninjas! 3.4 out of 53.4 out of 53.4 out of 53.4 out of 53.4 out of 5
Compare People 3.33 out of 53.33 out of 53.33 out of 53.33 out of 53.33 out of 5
What’s Your Stripper Name… 3.25 out of 53.25 out of 53.25 out of 53.25 out of 53.25 out of 5

Synopsis of AppRate features:

1. Allows the community to vote (Outside of Facebook)
2. Gives you a quick view of what the community has rated (Inside of Facebook)

The good news is … you can vote for Facebook apps outside of Facebook. The bad news is … you can’t vote for Facebook apps inside of Facebook! (Correct me if I’m wrong, Jeremy). Another area for consideration, is the pace with which app reviews are added on AppRate. If they can beat the pace of addition of reviews as All Facebook or similar sites then it’d be interesting to watch this space develop.

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  1. All Roads lead to [[Roam]] Research | Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

    […] doesn’t love discovering a music or stand-up act before the world does 2 LinkedIn (2006), Facebook (2006), Twitter (2007), Spotify (2011), Quora (2012) have been products I fell in love with before […]

  2. Mario Sundar

    Hi Brittany,

    Which Facebook app did you develop and has it been reviewed on AppRate yet?

  3. Brittany

    Pretty interesting! We have been developing our Facebook application and so it is always good to see which apps really resonate with users. I’m a big graffiti fan myself!

  4. Mario Sundar

    Well, with AppRate the community can decide which are the useful ones.

    Jeremy,
    Please let us know once you’ve fixed that. Look forward to that.

  5. Jeremy Toeman

    Mario – that’s correct, for now. Not exactly sure how to fix it yet, but it’s definitely a top priority!

  6. linuskendall

    Interesting post! I guess we’ll see a lot more of this as the amount of facebook applications continues to add on – the community needs ways of finding which are actually the useful ones!

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