Facebook just announced its application winners for their fbFund, which will receive $225,00 each to develop their products. There has been a question to whether the overall popularity of applications has declined. Facebook's new design has likely contributed to this trend since it helped declutter profiles and hid application boxes. I wonder if part of the initiative is to spur more interest in the developer platform as a counter. Although, the platform will likely continue to play an important role in shaping Facebook, I think Facebook Connect has been their smartest move.
ResearchLabs questions whether the $200 million that has been invested in Facebook applications as of July 2008 has been a good investment:
According to Mark Zuckerberg, more than two hundred million dollars have been invested in Facebook applications as of July 2008. But is it a good investment if the number of unique monthly users visiting Facebook applications is decreasing? I found that the average change in an application’s unique monthly users from September to October was a decrease of 87,997.
...Facebook applications are losing popularity, which could mean a huge loss of money for those people who have invested in the applications, as well as businesses which depend on people using these applications. Continue Reading...
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