I hopped on Facebook tonight and saw that Rob Cottingham had added an application from TD Canada Trust called "Split It". So of course I had to check it out! It is made for people who live together and need to share/split expenses. Pretty cool. TD seems to really be going after the college crowd, so the Facebook app is a great play. They also have a "Money Lounge" (essentially a Facebook group). It's really hard to tell who owns it; you rely on TD employees to disclose their biases. There are a few discussion threads; but the group itself has over 2,000 members. Hard to tell how many are employees. It's interesting what they have done with the group - very ad and offer oriented. Am curious if that matters to people who join. And why people join.
But, that being said, to me the Split It app is really pretty cool and Facebook is a great channel to be trying to engage in.
Telus has a Facebook app as well ... It's a fishbowl where you can add your top 5 (or 8 if you're a student) friends. It complements Telus' current 5 friends campaign with their mobile product. It looks really good but the implementation is less than intuitive. And kinda pointless. However, the discussion around the app is quite active and it is easy to tell who is the Telus rep (although he/she goes by the name Joe Fish which I think is a little ridiculous).
Now, I don't think all Facebook apps need to have a point or a practical purpose :) Some of my favourite apps are those that are a little frivolous, though I do really like the ones that let you be generous and give something to your friends (My Garden and Grow a Gift are two of my favs). It is important that they are well made and give people confidence in your brand. And like any social media activity, they take monitoring. There are accusations flying all over the Telus app discussion board about viruses that people downloaded with the app. And Joe Fish responds to every one. That takes time.
It's great to see these two Canadian brands experimenting with Facebook. I would love to know if these initiatives started with their agencies or with folks inside these companies who had experience with Facebook and said "We should be there!".