The ecosystem of game developers and other companies supplying services to Facebook users could generate as much as $500 million in revenue in 2009, or about as much as Facebook itself is projected to
make, says VentureBeat's Eric Eldon. This is fairly significant, considering that many have viewed Facebook apps as "gimmicks making no significant revenue." That said, the numbers are very difficult
to come by, as we're talking about an ecosystem of mostly small private companies that aren't willing to disclose what they're making. "Much of what I've heard is based on triangulating between
sources," says Eldon. "Everything here should be viewed as a rough estimate."
The most important takeaways from the lengthy piece: the fact that companies are creating real, sustainable
businesses on Facebook, the fact that many of these companies are doing well on other social and mobile platforms, like MySpace or Apple's App Store, and the fact that services that let third parties
access social network user data (like Facebook Connect) could be a further source of growth for third party developers in the future.
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