• by Jamie Tedford , Op-Ed Contributor, January 26, 2009

Sebastian Gard, Manager of Digital Marketing and Social Media at Microsoft, revealed this remarkable budget allocation in his panel discussion: "Looking Beyond Facebook- The New Places for Advertisers to Unleash Apps." He went on to gush about the Zales/ Facebook Connect promotion that brought the jewelry marketer over 4 million uniques during the holiday season. So this raises the logical question, is any other developer platform even close? It appears it's Facebook or Bust.

Chris Cuningham from Appsavvy and Kevin Barenblat from Context Optional both support the idea that Facebook is the best, and in some cases, the only real game in town. While each panelist gave the obligatory props to other open developer platforms like MySpace, iPhone, Linked In and others, the clear preference for their companies and clients is to market within Facebook.

Gard went on to say "If you want to build an app, you need to talk to app builders," reinforcing that there are indeed niche specialists that do this well, and general agencies and digital shops aren't fully equipped yet. Alternately, Appsavvy has an interesting model which involves matchmaking between successful apps and would be app marketers.

Build, buy or rent? How are you going to get into the app game?