WebProNews

There's a heck of a lot of bad economic news out there, but for a group of Facebook application developers, it's a great day.  A full 25 teams were named as fbFund recipients, and they'll receive $25,000 each as a result.

fbFund was started about 13 months ago with the idea of encouraging developers to create better apps.  A recent competition drew 600 applications, 25 of which were guaranteed to win their authors support and funding.  The excitement will continue as the number's whittled down to five, with additional prizes such as $225,000 at stake.  And user voting will play a role in that round.

 

We'll pause a moment to acknowledge the current crop of winners, though, and they certainly came up with same interesting stuff.  Facebook's Catherine Lee writes, "Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores.  While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends.  Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!"

Also, "Professional Profile leverages a user's existing social connections into a professional network," and "The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-'em-ups to platformers to racing games and more.  Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it."

The rest of the list of 25 apps is available at the Facebook Developers blog.  Pick a favorite or two if you like, and look for voting to start in mid-November.