Sproutly A Blog for Young and Growing Entrepreneurs

Scoble Declares “War” on the 20’s

In College, Trends on 1 August 2007 with Comments

Today, the TechCrunch interns, including me, posted our Top 10 Facebook apps. In kind gesture, Scoble comments, “It’s war. The 40 somethings vs. the 20 somethings” and comes up with his own Top 10.

Here’s my short response to the 40’s

1. Google Reader Shared Items. This is way more useful for those who read a lot of feeds. Plus it shows you who has the most popular blog posts in the past few hours. – Hmm I should check this out
3. The video application – Lets you send video messages to all your friends from your computer’s webcam.Yes this one is definitely cool
6. Upcoming Calendar app. Come on, don’t 20-somethings have to keep track of all the events that are coming their way? – A lot of students just use Facebook Events
7. Blog Friends. Don’t the interns have any friends with blogs? This is how you track them. – Here’s my blog
8. Wordpress. If you blog on Wordpress or Wordpress.com, this is the app for you. Shows your posts AND your comments. I thought every 20-something had a Wordpress blog? – Most college students I know are graduates of Xanga and LiveJournal actually
10. SkypeMe. Lets you use Skype to call me. – Who needs Skype? I know a lot of people who check Facebook messages more than they check email
11. FaceReviews. It’s a Website that reviews Facebook applications. – I thought young people just copy what their friends do?

The students I know don’t go on Facebook for utility purposes. They go on for the “emotional” aspect: writing on people’s walls, seeing who’s in a relationship with who, going through memories in the photo collection, etc. That’s why the most popular applications are Top Friends, X Me, Graffiti, Moods, Superwall. Most students treat Facebook as a playground rather than something serious. Wasn’t the whole point of Facebook to be unproductive during finals week?

This was definitely a wake-up call on just how big Facebook has grown. I remember joining Facebook during the early days when it was only open to about 30 to 50 colleges. Students posted crazy pictures of themselves, not having to worry about that their parents would see it. The whole college experience.

Fast forward 4 years. Now, we got people in their 40’s taking over. Here a picture of from a recent TC report regarding the FB demographics.

Despite what I just wrote above, I am excited that Facebook is starting to show a more mature side.

Update: Orli has his Top 10 here.