MANILA, Philippines -- Facebook may need to keep tighter rein of available social networking applications or else turn off users in the long-run, according to analyst Ovum.

Citing user statistics from the Facebook Developer Forum, Ovum noted trends may suggest a decline in usage of Facebook. Highly active users, for example, declined by more than half from January to April.

David Mitchell, Ovum analyst, puts the blame on the applications made available on Facebook.

"The proportion of totally banal applications seems to be on the increase and there are fewer and fewer applications that my network, as an example, is finding to be sticky," Mitchell said.

Other than a few apps like Super Wall, Photos, Notes and Posted Items, he noted that most applications are installed for a day or so but are quickly removed "as it becomes evident that they are only concerned with self-propagation and the collection of data on your social graph."

"In a more traditional application world an application that tries to self-propagate and that takes personal data is usually classified as a virus and is removed as soon as it is detected, before it can cause harm," he described.

"The same is beginning to happen with Facebook applications," he said.

Ovum did its own research on Facebook and said majority of applications fall under the "Just For Fun" and "Gaming" categories.

Microsoft acquired a stake in Facebook for $240 million, valuing the entire company at a staggering $15 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook as a college project, made a bold move opening up Facebook's APIs (application programming interfaces) to third-party developers.

Ovum, however, believes Facebook needs to "dramatically" improve the quality and usefulness of the applications being built on the platform, suggesting that it "incentivize" those that have measurable personal or business value while removing or blocking the trash applications.