Last year, BoomTown caused a tempest-in-a-Web-teapot by asserting that Facebook apps were, for the most part, inane.

And, while many said the market would develop from the frivolous to more useful–making Facebook a true “utility,” as promised by Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–that day is not today for the social-networking site or its third-part widget makers.

Instead, it’s still Pinocchio at Funland (and we know how that turned out!).

While this is great news for my 3- and 6-year-old boys, it still makes grumpy old me dubious.

Because, as I wrote in a post called “The Children’s Hour: Facebook Apps Are for Toddlers (There, We Said It)” that was published last October, I still assert that businesses based on Zombies and apps called Pop Ur Zit are questionable models:

But, so far, as popular as those apps have become, what Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL (TWX) back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison…

And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace (NWS) for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

Unfortunately, that’s still the case and today, we have a nice chart below from FlowingData to help our little case along from a visual point of view (click on the image to make it larger).

Case, unfortunately, not closed.

I admit, I went there once... out of curiosity. And I have no desire to go back. We all know what curiosity did to the

oh come on, Mom. sign up and i'll challenge you to a game of scrabble

Scrabble, eh ?

Isn't the current owner of the board
game suing the creators of that facebook
app ?

http://www.switched.com/2008/01/17/facebook-app-scrabulous-gets-cease-and-desisted/

The only thing you CAN count on these days is that someone somewhere is suing something.

I went to browse the site once, but you can't do that without signing up, so I left.

yep Dredd, that would be the app (Scrabulous)

sign up with false details... it's not like they can actually tell who you are - don't use your main email address either.

It wasn't about privacy, it was just too much hassle just to look around.