Out with the Spam, in with Presdo for Facebook

Now that I've been able to rid myself of those pestersome "Pet Hotties" application invites (thanks to the wonderful "Block Application" feature), I genuinely look forward to receiving invites to creative and helpful applications. Though many are still lack-luster and questionable, I'm quite pleased with the direction many developers of Facebook applications are taking.

One application I can legitimately say I look forward to using is the forthcoming application for Presdo, a social calendar application that intuitively allows users to schedule events and then share those events with others. Sure, everyone has their own calendar in a format they're familiar with, but a Facebook-based application that allows users to network events has a good deal of potential. The only thing similar that Facebook has right now (that is widely adopted) is the events system, which could use a good bit of tweaking.

My biggest issue with Facebook events is that many people send out invites to all their friends in spammer style, which is just as annoying as invites to SuperPoke or My Pet Hottie. Occasionally you'll get a hand-tailored invite to a very specific and limited engagement, but that is largely eclipsed by invites to some fund-raiser or high-school musical for which I frankly don't have the time or inclination. Often, I find myself declining more invites to impersonal events than I do group invitations or application invites. Not cool, annoying event invite spammer, not cool at all.

So you can see why a dedicated application could be a great thing for Facebook users. Presdo has opened its API to developers and created a contest that will award the best developers of social platform Presdo applications with new 3G iPhones. With annoying applications like SuperPoke on the way out and fun and useful applications like Presdo and Scrabble on their way, I might just spend a little more of my free time using Facebook for fun, rather than building up rage towards annoying event invitation spammers and invitations to applications like My Pet Hottie.