Facebook application development has proven to be a useful marketing tool for many companies. After doing some research, there are notably three different kinds of Facebook applications, which companies could consider:

1. Value - Value applications refer to applications which provide their users with information that is relevant and useful to them. This sort of application usually has a long life and is interacted with on a regular basis. A company which uses this sort of application is able to engage their members and provide them with real time information that is valuable. The sort of application I am referring to here could be an application which provides exchange rates and weather conditions. Information like this can be watched and interacted with on a regular basis.
2. Growth - Another sort of application and one which certainly seems to be the most popular is an application which is used solely to gather as many users as possible. There are many reasons for a company to want to do something like this, such as building the user base before launching a new product or having the hopes of being able to sell or monetize the application and use the traffic as the selling point. The type of application which comes to mind is the sort of application which allows two people to swap or trade items.
3. Brand - Creating an application with fancy visuals is a fantastic way for a company to get recognised. This form of application would require an interesting catch to it obviously, but the main focus would be brand awareness. An example of such an application could be a news headlines application, which displays the latest news headlines from the companies website - Now, I realise this is touching close on the Value application description, but the difference here is that the concept is very small and the main point is to present the user with a bright and loud profile box application logo, which basically shows off the company in hopes for recognition.

In my opinion, a company would be best to invest in a Value application, engaging their users and interacting with them, however many companies would see a good return from a branding application. In terms of Growth applications, this type of application is the least efficient, unless the company has a strategy in place to make use of the thousands of users who register to use the application.

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