What It Does:: Just answer a few questions about what you find important in a guy, what’s your idea of a perfect date, and your ideal car, and the quiz will spit out your perfectly matched Hollywood mate. Options include Brad Pitt, Dane Cook, John Mayer, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, and Zac Efron.
Number of Downloads:: 3,760 users, all with unanswered love letters to the Jonas Brothers.
Why It Fails:: Answer choices are a bit stereotypical and are obviously geared toward a particular result. For example, for favorite movie, choices include Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Pursuit of Happyness, High School Musical, Save the Last Dance, The Princess Bride or "anything where a hot guy is shirtless." This probably means it’s a bit skewed.
What It Does:: A 9-question, text-only quiz will tell you which American region your accent hails from. You answer questions, like whether "dawn" and "don" sound the same, different, or it’s hard to tell. After completing the quiz and navigating through several annoying advertisements, the application generates an answer.
Number of Downloads:: 71,815 users, most likely all unaware of their own accent.
Why It Fails:: There are better ways to discover what type of accent you have. Nine times out of ten, it’s probably the accent local to the region where you grew up. Shocking, we know.
What It Does:: Replace everything on your Facebook account marked as "friend" with "enemy." You can display enemies on your profile, tell your friends to enemy someone, and specify enemy details (the reasons for enmity humorously range from “[name] insulted my intelligence” to “[name] killed my parents”). You can even "flip off" an enemy instead of a nice "poke." However, your enemy only discovers your disdain if he or she too has added the application.
Number of Downloads:: Only 4,100 users since July 2007 – nice to know that the vast majority of Facebookers don’t like making enemies.
Why It Fails:: Users love campy applications, and this one is as close to over the top as you can get. So why is it failing? Facebook defines itself as “a social utility that connects people with friends.” Looks like Facebookers are uncomfortable with even joking about having real enemies.
What It Does:: The wild proliferation of Facebook applications in the last few months has been enough to drive anyone a little batty. But, if you want confirmation of your sanity, check out "Are You Insane?" Questions include "What would be your rank in the army?" and “Which word best describes you – popular, unforgiving, or evil?”
Number of Downloads:: 2,024 users, about the same number of people crazy enough to switch to the New Facebook.
Why It Fails:: This application fails for the same reason that people haven’t flocked to other macabre apps like “EnemyBook” – insanity (and, truthfully, all mental illness) simply isn’t that funny. Heck, it’s not funny at all, and that’s a problem when you try to make a campy quiz about it.
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Recent Comments | 5 Total
September 6, 2008 at 12:52pm by Johannes Bhakdi
Ha, thats a fun article! Its true there is lots of crap on Facebook. We are working on a facebook application (Klatcher widget) that makes user generated content sell - I hope we don't appear in the next issue of the worst applications ;)
Sell your content on Klatcher
September 7, 2008 at 8:17pm by A. Lapre
Most, if not all FB apps are annoying and really make your FB page look cluttered. I have yet to see any really useful apps or apps that are "fun" to take the time to download and share.
September 8, 2008 at 10:50am by David Mullings
Oh so true.
I would love to see an article on the opposite too: the ones that have been successful, like Coinjar or iLike.