A very short time ago, Facebook morphed from being a social network to being a “social networking platform”. What this means is they have opened up their API for third parties to produce plugin applications that users may add to their profiles. This move has been blindingly successful in that only a few weeks from launch there are 1766 applications written for the platform.

But I wonder why.

Say I run a site called WidgetTimes, and all of the Widget manufacturers support me by buying ads on WidgetTimes. A technologist at heart, I decide to write a WidgetTimes application for Facebook so that my users can see the last 5 news items from WidgetTimes. I’m succeeding in getting my widget news out to Facebook users, but I am not afforded the opportunity to obtain ad impressions and click through traffic as a form of “payment” for purveying this news. I somehow doubt that a popular application that displays advertisements would be allowed to go far by Facebook’s management either, so that leaves me wondering…why? Are Facebook applications just a fad, something for students to do for fun?

Any opinions would be appreciated.