All the buzz for the past year has been about social applications, interactive pieces of media that you can install on your Facebook profile as well as on MySpace, Bebo and a number of other social networks. A few weeks ago, Facebook boomed to over 1 billion application installations but since then it appears that growth has been relatively stagnant and has even dropped a little.

When applications launched last year users rushed to install them. I rapidly began cataloging all of the applications on AllFacebook but eventually slowed down with posting about new ones so frequently because the novelty seemed to wear off. I’ve enjoyed playing a number of the games on Facebook but unfortunately I just don’t have time to anymore. Social applications tend to be a way for me to waste time, not to get work done.

While I don’t think that social applications are dead, I have a feeling that a lot of users will grow out of them. Then again, I’d imagine that people were saying similar things about the web years ago considering all the pornography and junk that’s out there. While things like Twitter and FriendFeed have made it easier for me to communicate, games and dating applications don’t help me accomplish much aside from putting off work that I need to get done.

Have you grown out of applications as well or are you still frequenting them? Are there any particular apps that you use on a regular basis?

Rafe Needleman has a post up today about a new social bookmarking site called Diigo. I’m always extremely hesitant about installing new tools on my browser but for this article I decided to give it a whirl. After registering (which has an excessive number of steps), I restarted my browser and started testing out the features.

One useful feature that stood out was the ability to share clips from web pages you are visiting with friends as well as other visitors. I immediately went to my own sites to see what other visitors had come to the site. Aside from being able to see their user avatar and view their profile, there wasn’t much additional utility to the browser add-on. As of now del.icio.us takes care of most of my social bookmarking needs. It would be great if del.icio.us could suggest new friends but for now that’s the only feature that I think is lacking.

Rafe came to a different conclusion and is a fan of the new tool. I figure you can only build a social bookmarking utility so many ways but I’m sure there are plenty of people that disagree. While I like being connected with new people via my browsing behavior, I’m not sure how an introduction would proceed. “Hey, so I saw you browsing my blog … you like it?” Alternatively, if you’re browsing a gaming website you could find people that are equally addicted to games such as dolphin olympics 2.

Do you see any need for adding another social bookmarking tool?