As one of Facebook´s 500 million active users, if you want to be noticed by your friends (or fans!) you´re going to want your Facebook Page to pull people in, your conversations to be expressive and your opinions to matter. From enlivening your chat to mobilizing support for good causes, this list of free Facebook tools and apps allows you to promote your Facebook profile and make yourself seen.
An interesting status always grabs people´s attention. Status Shuffle allows you to choose from a long list of happy, sad, funny or just plain crazy Facebook statuses submitted by the Facebook community. Scroll through the selection, pick the one that best fits your mood and the application will automatically update your Facebook status. And if you’re feeling particularly witty or philosophical, make up a status of your own and watch it spread through the community.
If you’re a keen traveler and would like to share your travel plans and experiences with your friends, try Where I’ve Been. This application lets you edit your own world map, marking out the cities and countries where you have lived, been to and would still like to visit. You can compare your map with your friends´ maps and make a travel scrapbook with photos and videos. Where I’ve Been also tells you how much of the world you have covered so far and provides quick facts about countries including a brief national history, population numbers, GDP, life expectancy and unemployment rate.
Want to make your Facebook chats more expressive? Forget the limited list of emoticons that already comes with Facebook chat. Emoinstaller is a handy new app which allows you to add hundreds of cool emoticons to your Facebook Chat conversations. Big or small, animated or still, the list is huge and there is something in there for everyone. Emoinstaller integrates itself neatly into your Facebook Chat windows and the application’s interface is simple and intuitive, allowing you to add emoticons to your chats at the click of a button.
If you, like the average Facebook user, have around 130 friends, you’re going to have a problem remembering all those birthdays and special occasions. Birthday Cards allows you to send free cards to your friends and family. You can either choose from an extensive list of animated or still cards, or you can design your own. The application also functions as your personal secretary, keeping track of all the important birthdays, anniversaries, parties and holidays you put in the birthday calendar, and sending you reminders so that you have plenty of time to make or choose the right card for the occasion.
Feel like sharing the love? Whether you’re in the mood for flirting or romance, or just giving a friend a morale boost, Give Hearts allows you to choose from a large collection of fun, suggestive or just plain cuddly images. More hearts are added on a regular basis, so you will never run out of ways of to show you care.
Do you have a cause you´d like others to care about too? Causes gives you a platform for mustering support and donations, and it works – to date, circa $29 million has been raised for a variety of worthy causes. Starting a cause is a simple matter of going to the Causes tab of the application, clicking on ‘Start one yourself!’ and selecting a beneficiary from guidestar.org’s list of around 15,000 registered nonprofit organizations. You can also join an existing cause by selecting one from the various available categories, including animals, education, environment, health, international and political campaigns.
Sometimes you don´t want to be logged onto Facebook, but you do want to stay connected. Chit Chat for Facebook is a Windows IM client that allows you to chat with your Facebook friends and write to their walls without being logged onto the Facebook site. Chit Chat imports all of your Facebook contacts, so you can get chatting immediately. The application lists all your online and offline friends and you can start a new conversation with any online friend by just clicking on their name. Chit Chat also has a neat, tabbed chat window, allowing you to easily swap between conversations, and it saves your chat history so that you are never left wondering what you were talking about.
RSS Graffiti
If you have your own website or blog, a Facebook Fan Page and more than one RSS/Atom feed, then RSS Graffiti could be the application for you. RSS Graffiti regularly checks any RSS feeds that you specify for updates, and posts all the new entries that it finds to any Facebook wall that you designate. The only thing that you have to do is add RSS Graffiti to your Facebook profile and give the app permission to check your site(s) for updates and publish those updates on your Facebook walls. And wait for the popularity of your blog or website to rise.
BandPage
If you are in a band, you should have a band page. BandPage gathers your band information from Facebook, together with feeds from Twitter and custom blogs, and puts the lot into one slick, tabbed page, showcasing your group to perfection. Fans can visit your band page to listen to your tunes, browse through photos and videos, check out your bio and look for upcoming gigs. They can share your hot news and latest songs with friends by posting to their own news feeds and each others walls, and leave admiring messages on your wall. Editing your band page is easy, as is uploading new tracks from SoundCloud, YouTube or your computer. Best of all, bands can received royalties based on each play of their song through the YouTube partner program.
If you have more to say about yourself than what types of activities and tv shows you like, try Extended Info. This application allows you to expand your personal information section with the stuff you really find important. Like how many languages you speak, what you’re currently reading, the foods you love, the things you fear and the things you would like to do before you die. Extended Info also allows you to embed photos, videos and music into your custom fields, and has a share feature which enables you to tell your fans when you’ve added a new nugget of information.
This is a guest post by Daniel Offer, who enjoys writing about and designing Facebook emoticons.
Original Post: Top Ten Facebook Tools & Cool Facebook Applications - Computer Tips, Tricks and Tweaks
