Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Anyone can join Facebook
All that’s needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.

Discover the people around you
Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school. Join the networks that reflect your real-life communities to learn more about the people who work, live, or study around you.

Information provided by Facebook.com

According to an article posted by Steve O’Hear at ZDNet. here is a list of the top 5 Facebook Applications. (Descriptions provide by ZDNET)

1. iLike integrates the music social network and recommendation service into your profile. Adding music-based social networking to Facebook makes perfect sense, and is something they could have easily done themselves. That’s what makes the company’s Platform strategy so intriguing. Mike Arrington (over at TechCrunch) also notes the omission of Last.fm which is arguably the best-of-breed of music-based social networks.

2. Horoscopes (by RockYou!) adds twice-weeky horoscope readings to your profile.

3. The Compass (by the Washington Post) involves taking a survey that determines your political compass. The results are then displayed on your profile. It’s a fun idea, but hardly qualifies as an ‘application’.

4. Games adds multiplayer web-based games to Facebook: “Play games and meet new people in your networks! Add the Games application to get access to a constantly changing selection of fun multi-player games, all right in your browser.” Pretty obvious but neat idea that has the potential to take traffic away from dedicated web-based gaming social networks. If the games are any good that is.

5. Picnik adds basic photo editing functionality to Facebook. Considering that the social network has been reported as the largest photo-sharing site on the web, giving users the ability to re-size, crop, and enhance their photos without leaving the site is a smart move. Although again, it seems like the kind of thing Facebook should have done themselves.

Its seems like more and more people are catching on to the new Facebook applications and Facebook Platform, it will be interesting to see what new application will come of it.