Interactive gaming. It used to be only for "geeks", but it went mainstream a few years ago when Facebook, Yahoo! Games, Gamesville, and other sites turned social networking into a buzzword. You can play the same game with a friend across the world, share ranking information on your profile, and invite others to play.

I recently joined Facebook, and dove right into the interactive applications scene. With these mini computer programs, you can play on your own, visit your friends who are playing, join in with other members around the globe, compare quiz results, and share product and place reviews. My three favorites so far are (Lil) Green Patch, Willy's Sweet Shop, and weRead.

(Lil) Green Patch and its affiliated program (Lil) Blue Cove donate money to The Nature Conservancy to buy acres of rainforest. While you play these games, you earn "green bucks" and rack up points, which get calculated into acres saved. You can give plants to your friends for free, set up your own green patch, and help other users take care of their green patches. With the green bucks you earn, you can buy supplies for caring for the patches, gifts for your own and others' patches, and other incentives.

There are three side-games within (Lil) Green Patch: chasing a rainbow, building a mushroom house, and acquiring collections. If you discover a rainbow on someone else's patch, you can grab it and put it on your own. If you keep the rainbow long enough, you can earn special gifts for your patch. In the game's store, you can buy a mushroom house with your green bucks and fill it with cosy furnishings, then visit others' houses and leave messages. As you play the game, it periodically awards you puppies, feathers, kittens, and other garden finds. You build these finds into collections, which award you more acres.

Willy's Sweet Shop is similar to (Lil) Green Patch, except it benefits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. You give candy, popsicles, and ice cream to your friends, set up your own sweet shop, buy special gifts and supplies with "sweetbucks", and help take care of other users' shops.  Buying special gifts unlocks more free gifts, plus gives your friends an immediate one-time sweet for their shops.

WeRead is different from the first two. It is not a game, but rather an information-sharing app. With weRead, you can keep a log of books you have read, books in your personal library, and future reading choices. You can also write and read reviews, select your favorite authors, join book clubs, and get recommendations.

A sub-application within weRead is called "chucking". You can throw a book at a friend (virtually, of course)! If you have a book you want to recommend to someone, chuck it at them. If you just want to give them a wake-up call or a humorous reminder, chuck an appropriate title at them.  Warning:  make sure they are bibliophiles too, or they might not get the joke!

Have fun with these applications, and I will be reviewing more as my journey through Facebook continues!  Feel free to leave recommendations in the comments or answer Maddie Ruud's request to write your own hub about it.