Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Scoble Is So Right About Kara Being SSSSSOOOOO Right About Silly Facebook Apps!

You always have to get a little worried when someone opens a post like this: Kara! Kara! Kara!

Besides sounding like I am about to invade Pearl Harbor, I thought blogger Robert Scoble was going to slap me around for insulting the inanity of most third-party applications on Facebook. Instead, he agrees and thinks there is a need too for more scalable applications. Go Scoble!

rugrats

In fact, we got a lot of reaction to the two posts on Facebook widgets that I wrote earlier this week (here and here), in which I thought even my 5-year-old might find the apps on the social network a little silly (and this is a kid who thinks burping is the height of hilarity).

Here are some choice comments:

Wrote Luca Penati:

I think we will start to see more and more professional applications and applications to write our own application. We are still in an experimental phase. I am still experimenting. In the meantime I will continue to ignore vampires and Draculas and hope to not receive the Hot Potato. But will continue to click to your posts from my Facebook home page.”

Wrote Dave McClure:

I think you’re measuring the impact of the platform when it’s just barely into the top of the first inning of a baseball game.

“Platform has been out for all of ~5 months, and while adoption for many of these apps are impressive for that short a time frame, the overall maturity of the apps is still fairly limited.”

Wrote John Minnihan:

Facebook is trying to take a fad and sustain it.

“It was interesting for a while, but I already see a *marked* reduction in both my own use and those who are close to me.”

Wrote Mari Smith:

Hallelujah–someone speaking out about the frivolity of 99.9% of FB apps. I am *so* not interested in all the junk requests that keep piling up, and the poke thing is a bunch of nonsense.”

And Lee Lorenzen wrote:

Your prior post about the childish nature of the first apps on Facebook that, as reported on the www.adonomics.com home page, have been installed a total of 365 million times and used 27 million times by unique users in the prior day seems a little condescending to me.

“Why is Kara Swisher right and 27 million citizens of Facebook wrong?”

Memo to Lee:

Why am I right (and I am!)?

I am condescending because I am a big grumpy adult and Facebook apps are like an army of tiny little Rugrats.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus