We all love the entertaining world of Facebook that allows us to share out interests and preoccupations with the ones around us. I always felt I looked like Brad Pitt, it’s about time an application confirms my suspicions. And this application that is used by a growing number of members lately is called Likeness.  Basically it allows you to make comparisons between your friends or between you and movie stars.

The way this application works is through tests which are aimed at your personality or on what your views on things like relationships or interests. Once you take a test you will receive results depending on the answers that you gave. When this step is complete you can compare yourself with the friends you have on Facebook who also took the tests. This way, you will be able to find more or less compatible friends and see what your matches are. You will also find out what exactly you have in common with your friends that also played with the Likeness application.

When it comes to famous people, you can find out what celebrity looks like you in a way or another as the application can compare the pictures you upload with those of movie stars, singers and so on. Have fun and upload more different pictures of yourself in various positions and you will find the celebrities that have similar looks with yours.

The only disadvantage that you may find is that if you use the Likeness feature your friends may also receive invitations to do so, a feature which I found a bit intrusive (I don’t know if I’m that popular but my inbox is filled with messages from friends I have on Facebook. However, this is easily preventable if you check the preferences options not to send these messages (trust me your friends will love for it).

By joining Likeness you will find an easy to use application that will allow you to have fun and maybe discover a few things about yourself and your friends. Discover if you match with your contacts from Facebook and if so, how much, as you will surely find Likeness an enjoyable way to do so. Also find out what celebrities you resemble with and let your friends know.

Thank god for the fresh powder we got this winter, because if there’s anything good that comes out of a cold snowy winter is Skiing and Hockey.  Unfortunately for me the Maple Leafs stink, so that pretty much leaves me skiing.   I was glad to find an application called MySnowBuddy, which is designed to cater to people who love the mountains and practice winter sports.

MySnowBuddy is the easiest way for those who love skiing or snowboarding to connect with one each other and share their experiences, their likes and dislikes. Once you join this application you will have to complete a short questionnaire related to what types of sports you like and other characteristics that will help you and others to connect. This is a great way to coordinate meetings in specific locations with new people who love the slopes as much as we do.

An interesting thing is that the application offers you information about the local mountains in Western Canada, such as where to go and info related to the weather conditions. For the moment, it includes information related to Hemlock, Whistler, Cypress, Grouse and Seymour.  This application should really come in handy come the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  You’ll be able to easily find people who are going to the same events as you.

Another great feature is that you will be able to participate at ride share. The advantages are that you can either organize yourself a ride or invite others to join or you can take part at a ride share that someone else planned. You will be able to post or read information regarding the costs and the location and choose the suggestion that fits you best. Not only that you will find many options to choose from and meet new people but you will also get the chance to promote the reduction of emissions and a healthy lifestyle.

Furthermore the application offers a sort of equipment marketplace where you can buy or sell winter gear.  Users can post their own gear for sale so if you want to upgrade your current equipment this application is a great place to start.

Yo Yo, why go to the gym in reality when you get all the exercise you want with your virtual avatar.  This approach perfectly suits a massive couch potato such as myself. YoVille is the Sims meet Facebook. A virtual world on Facebook where you can do pretty much anything, go to the virtual casino, visit a virtual bank and even see a virtual florist. YoVille is one of the most popular applications on Facebook made by Zynga Games. The game itself is extremely well developed with a highly responsive virtual environment which makes the virtual world of YoVille very easy to navigate and to play the game.  Overall the application is very advanced in terms of visual interface compared to other games on Facebook.  Most games are textual and only a few utilize flash graphics and elements to the extent that YoVille does.  You can stroll around YoVille at will and chat to other players in the game.  You can invite them to participate in various activities and even throw snowballs at people.

However, not all is well in YoVille, the game has been under heavy criticism lately with some members even starting a petition against the use of the application.  The cause for this member backlash is the way Zynga has monetized the game.  Essentially there is 2 types of currencies: YoCoins and YoCash. The catch is that some ‘premium’ items such as pets, gadgets and others can only be bought with YoCash which can only be obtained by paying Zynga with real money using your credit card or paypal.  Although YoCoins can also be paid for you can earn them by playing the application.  YoCoins can be baught at 5,000 YoCoins for $10 and YoCash can be baught at 25 YoCash for $5.00.  Many members who saved up many coins by inviting others and participating in the gameplay since the application was launched were left out in the cold when Zynga introduced the new monetization procedures.  As a result many players have left the application and now feel betrayed.  There have been several groups who even called for a general YoVille blackout day on January 16th. Although I can understand Zynga’s point of view (it takes a lot of resources and investment to develop an application like YoVille) they simply wanted to monetize the application.  But if anywhere is there a case for how to totally botch the monetization process look no further than YoVille.  Zynga has taught many application developers an important lesson in how to NOT monetize your application properly and in the process alienate a large portion of your users.  In the monetization process Zynga has overlooked a key aspect of user retention and essentially certain aspects of the game are now pay only with no other recourse for non-paying users.   Regardless of the new monetization process the application has been steadily growing and according to appdata.com it currently holds 3.2 million active monthly users.  Although the game itself is simply fantastic I feel that the monetization of the application takes it down a notch.

Granted, I get more pokes then the pillsbury doughboy, but alas this review is not about those kinds of pokes.  A while back Facebook introduced a feature called Pokes. It allowed you to ‘poke’ your friends to get their attention. Pokes would appear in the right hand window in a prominent location. You had the option of poking back or remove the poke. It’s a nifty little feature to increase the sociability of the network and was intended to get people talking to each other, but it was very limited in what you can do with it. SuperPoke from Slide Studios is basically the same feature only on steroids. Installing the application will enable you to create much more complex pokes. After installing you can have the option of changing your notice to anything from ‘throw a polar bear at’, ‘make out with’ or my favorite ‘play strip poker with’. So far my attempts to get my friends attention by trying to get them to play strip poker have been futile; I guess I must be losing my sex appeal. Slide has created a very viral and social application here which appeals to wide audiences, and they have also made sure to properly monetize the application. There are Premium Super Pokes (I know, it does sound a bit over the top) which cost gold bars. The premium super pokes are bigger and are animated as opposed to the 16×16px static icons in the regular pokes and cost on average about 10 gold bars. You can purchase the gold bars for about $1.00 for 10 bars, or $4.99 per month for unlimited bars. Slide also claims to offer ‘exclusive premium privileges’ when you sign up to the monthly payment option. The privileges include premium user status and ‘cute premium animals’ – whatever that means. This kind of monetization seems to be a growing trend in the Facebook application development as developers rush to capitalize on their creations. I see nothing wrong in Slide doing that, but if you are going to monetize the application by making some of its feature use on a per-pay basis at least offer some kind of initial trial of the features so that people can try them out before forking over hard-earned dollars. Slide should have thrown in a few free premium pokes and trial access to these so called ‘premium privileges’ for all new users.