The Top Facebook Apps from Israel

 

If you can play games, share referrals, recognize friends and purchase gifts through Facebook, it’s probably thanks to an Israeli startup.

When Facebook acquired Israeli facial recognition app maker Face.com for an estimated $100 million in June, it highlighted a growing category of made-in-Israel apps specifically built for the Facebook ecosystem.

Face.com already powered Facebook’s own photo-tagging suggestions functionality, and made two of Facebook’s must-have apps – Photo Finder, which helps people find untagged pictures of themselves and their friends, and Photo Tagger for quickly assigning tags to group photos. So the acquisition was entirely logical.

While Face.com may be the most prominent, er, face on the Israeli social media acquisition block, there’s lots more Israeli apps out there. For every Facebook fanatic (and these days who isn’t?), here are ISRAEL21c’s Top 10 Facebook apps from Israel.

1. Rounds

What do you get when you marry Facebook with Skype? An app that allows Facebook users not only to see who they’re talking to, but to share pictures, videos and game-playing in real time, even when they’re separated by miles. Much of the appeal is in the interactive games, but it can also be used to browse pictures together with your (very hip) grandma.

Rounds started as an online dating site, but the founders were worried participants might get bored, so they added in game play and realized that this was the real money shot. Now they’ve re-introduced the dating theme in the ability to chat with strangers, although the company assures us that strict privacy controls are maintained.

2. Mywebees

It’s estimated that 99 percent of all websites belong to small businesses or individuals. What do they all have in common?

Virtually no traffic. But Facebook has plenty of that. If only there were a way to port an existing website to Facebook with a single click. Oh, wait, there is. It’s called Mywebees, an Israeli-made Facebook app that shrinks a website to 30 percent of its original size while still keeping the interface usable.

But why stop there? Mywebees allows you to add more apps (21 so far) to your newly created Facebook business page: social sharing buttons, coupons, “badges” (virtual awards for fans) and more, some of them free. You can also create cross-promotional alliances with other Facebook members and a mobile version of your Facebook page. Coming up: reverse publishing to turn your Facebook page into a complete website with no sweat.

3. TubeHero

What would happen if you mashed up Guitar Hero, YouTube and Facebook? You’d get something like Israel’s TubeHero, a Facebook app that lets you click away in time to the music from your favorite YouTube videos.

The play will be familiar to air guitar-heads young or old: Click a button whenever a particular color circle comes sliding down your way; the more you nail, the higher your score. You can view top scores by day, week or all-time. Play solo, against Facebook friends, or random social media gamers. If you’re feeling flush, you can pay for a fancier guitar or a cooler background.

4. If I Die

What happens to your social media profile after you die? As more current and post-Baby Boomers take to Facebook, the question is no longer rhetorical. In 2009, Facebook announced that it will keep your Timeline active after you’ve passed away in order for your friends and family to keep posting. But how about you?

Israeli app maker Willook offers “If I Die,” with which you can prepare a video clip or text message to be published to Facebook on confirmation by three authorized friends that you are no longer among the living (only after all three report in will your pre-recorded message go live, so to speak). You can share some post-mortem wisdom, or a dream you’d like your friends to fulfill. Maybe even that final joke — the one only you thought was funny.

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