• L.A. Times, Monday, September 10, 2007 11:01 AM

Six months after Mark Zuckerberg opened his social network, Facebook, to software developers, there are more than 3,000 programs of various shapes, sizes and business models for users to add to their profiles. Their various functions range from linking to and learning from friends' music collections to turning friends into zombies. Eighty percent of Facebook's 40 million users have at least one app attached to their profile.

What we have here is a growing Facebook economy, says the L.A. Times--albeit with very little money changing hands, as yet. However, the potential for such a universe appears limitless, the report says. "Facebook is God's gift to developers," says Lee Lorenzen, founder of an investment firm that bets on companies creating Facebook apps. "Never has the path from a good idea to millions of users been shorter."

Meanwhile, many of the 80,000-plus registered software developers on Facebook are building businesses, and doing it faster and cheaper than they could on the Web, with a built-in user base. The result is Facebook app ad networks like RockYou and Slide. These companies build apps and distribute ads across them; RockYou says it reaches more than 29 million of the social network's users.

Read the whole story at L.A. Times »