Easy widget creation - now anyone can make a Facebook App

Ever since Facebook launched its open developers platform almost a year ago Facebook Apps have been all the rage, including a wide range of Apps developed in support of various charities. However, for anyone not especially into software development the idea of creating your own Facebook App may well never have occurred. Where do you start even if you want to have a go?

Well, based on the 30 mins I’ve just spent creating a simple little Facebook App for this blog (which you can add to your Facebook profile with just a couple of clicks here) a good place to start is at Widgetbox. As well as being a place to browse through over 50,000 web widgets, the site also enables you to create your own - through an incredibly easy to follow step-by-step, point-and-click process. There’s even a way to turn your widgets into cash - although I haven’t looked-into that as yet.

It’s free to use and, while the Widget and Facebook App I produced are very simple (actually a Blidget, apparently - a widget carrying a blog feed), if you’ve got more than half an hour to spend learning the ropes then you may well be able to come-up with something more sophisticated.