There’s a trend of recently released films deploying Facebook applications as another channel of advertising. A Facebook application is a strategic and cost-effective way to promote a movie because it engages the audience and is a near perfect platform for implementing a viral effect. Users invite their friends to the application, and those friends invite their own friends, and this process can go all down the chain of network nodes.

Plus, development and hosting costs aside, a Facebook application is essentially a free advertisement. Compare a couple thousand dollars for paying a Facebook developer to what these movie companies have to pay for a 30-second commercial on television that is really a hit or miss.

Here are newest movie applications from big companies like 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures.

Rambo (Sony Pictures)

The Rambo application lets you attack your friends (all in fun). Decimate them with a chainsaw or shoot a bazooka over their way. Yes, this application is just as demented and gory as the movie.

You gain points by mindlessly attacking everyone on your friends list, and you can eventually “become Rambo” if you accumulate enough points. This application is short, sweet, and to the point: Go see Rambo to see some crazy action.

Check out Become Rambo

The Bucket List (Warner Bros. Pictures)

The Bucket List application is actually a useful one that can last on people’s profiles longer than the time this movie is in theaters. You create a “Bucket List” of things you want to do in life, and this list is displayed on your profile in a cute notebook-style box. The nice social touch is matching up the items in your Bucket List with your friends’ to see if you have similar goals.

For some reason, though, I don’t know how well targeted this application is for Facebook users. The Bucket List is a list of things you want to do before you die. Are many college students really pondering this deep, serious issue about life?

Check out The Bucket List.

Jumper (20th Century Fox)

Jumper is a slick but extremely useless application. It feels like the developers behind this application stopped short of finishing the application because Fox refused to pay up the rest of the money. The Jumper application makes use of flash effects and dynamic text replacement. You can “jump” (teleport) your friends into various spots on the world map, which then displays a slick animation of you teleporting to that location and generates a “(insert name) was here” type message.

Check out Jumper

It will be interesting to see how big companies embrace the social networking platforms to promote their products. The current companies doing it are still early adopters and have not optimized their campaigns. Creating social applications could very soon become a standard advertising method, just as pay-per-click advertising quickly became a necessity for many businesses.