Social Machinery

Probably the growth that Facebook experienced this year, reaching over 350 million users, will continue during 2010.  Increasingly, brands, companies, music bands, NGOs, will create their pages, profiles, events, groups or causes in the social network site as a way to reach their consumers and get some spotlight.

But in this extremely crowded place, for being able to differentiate our brand we must know some essentials applications for it.

I leave you with a selection of 10 must-have applications to stand out from the crowd.

Professional Profile : Interesting tool for separating friends and business contacts. Users can create a new tab focused on their professional profile.

My LinkedIn Profile : Allows users to include a Linkedin logo in different formats on their home page giving direct access to their LinkedIn profile.

TweetPo.st : Enable users to bring Twitter content to Facebook but with some additional value. Since Twitter and Facebook friends are not necessarily the same, and conversation threads may be different, this application is able to “translate” Twitter messages, using RT, @ or any other twitter specific symbol that may seem strange to Facebook users, into a formal Facebook message.

Networked Blogs:  This application already has more than 400,000 users and adds 500 blogs every day, according to Read Write Web. With this application you can bring your blog to Facebook and create a community around it. With this application you can:

• Include the application in your profile or on any page.
• Import the Blog Feed to your profile and page.
• Add a blogroll on your profile to promote your blog and those you follow.
• Use it as a blog directory based on topics or location.
• Read new post and vote those you love.
• Create a list of favorite blogs.

RSS Connect Through this application you can include any syndicated content (RSS) in your wall, on labels or as a tab in your profile or in a corporate Facebook page. Feeds are updated automatically.

Poll : Is the most used survey application on Facebook. You can add surveys to your profile or to your organization site.

SlideShare : This application allows users to integrate and update all their Slideshare documents, either on their profile or as a new tab.

Simplaris Blogcast : Is one of the easiest ways to incorporate the contents of a blog within Facebook. The blog´s content is updated automatically on Facebook, whatever blog editor you are using. The application can added your profile or a customizable label.. It could also be included on any page on Facebook.

Blog : Another interesting application to move blog content to Facebook. Is extremely simple to use.

Blog It : It is a useful application to take the content you generate on different platforms like WordPress, LiveJournal, Twitter or Tumblr to Facebook.