Facebook is getting closer and closer to the real world, becoming an integral part of people day-to-day activities. Yesterday, the social network has introduced 60 new apps that could be added to the users Timeline profile and allows them to express themselves better than ever before.

New Social Expressions Using Apps

Let me go back for a second to September 2011. At the Facebook F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Facebook is intending to combine apps that will enable users to interact beyond the good-old “Like” button and would let them also to socially engage with additional verbs such as “Eat”, “Listen” and “Read”.

Well, few months after and a collaboration with 60 different web companies, Mark Zuckerberg can delete it from his “to do list”. The 60 Timeline apps varied among many different categories, for example: Music (Turntable.fm, Rhapsody), travel (Gogobot, Wipolo), food (Foodily, Yummly), shopping (LivingSocial, Pinterest) and many more.

The apps that currently available are just the beginning and Facebook is clearly intending to integrate much, much more of them (potentially unlimited number) in the near future in an ongoing approving apps process where developers and companies will create unique apps to implement on the most popular social network as expressed by Eddie O’Neil in Facebook Developer Blog:

“The apps launching today are just starting to demonstrate the types of self-expression that are possible with the Open Graph. There are many more stories to tell and great apps to tell them. Get started today!”

The Next Stage Of Social Networking?

I think that Facebook understand that people are now looking for the next evolutionary stage of social networking and seek for more ways to communicate with their virtual social surrounding. “Like” simply doesn’t cover all reactions and emotions people wish to share and this is where the new apps are coming in.

I also think that Facebook’s shot callers have concluded that they can’t create by themselves the next layer of social networking expressions as they are almost unlimited (just like the human behavior). Therefore, “outsourcing” the next layer of social expressions to be created by third-party apps seems like a very logical move.

And as for the other social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and mostly Google+, they will have to fall into line with Facebook’s new social possibilities so they won’t stay behind. Expect that soon enough, the other social network will also announce on integrating new social interactions of their own…

To learn more about the new Timeline apps you can watch this short video released by Facebook: