Finally a Facebook revenue scheme I get
Facebook money… facebook’s way of making money. Annoyed by Facebook applications? Hoping FB does something to curb their ubiquity on your stream? Well, don’t look now but Facebook’s incentives just got twisted. By taking a cut of the applications through Facebook Credits, FB will have every reason to make sure high performing apps make it in front of the most people. And this revenue stream I understand. So is Facebook ultimately a massively multiplayer online game system? I’d say yep.
Facebook will soon roll Facebook Credits out to even more application developers, so it has publicly announced that it will take 30% of the revenues earned for goods sold via Facebook Credits.
Facebook Credits make up Facebook’s virtual currency; the currency became available to some users last Spring. Those users could buy gifts with it. Facebook then made a deal that gave users the ability to purchase Facebook Credits with their PayPal accounts and offered Facebook Credits as a currency option to several application developers, including uber-huge game-makers Playfish and Zynga.
Facebook says it’s taking the 30% cut so it can invest “heavily in the ecosystem” by educating users and marketing to them about the currency, testing out incentives to get people to try the credits out, and seeding credits to get people comfortable with them.
Now if I could only find my way around facebook again…