• The New York Times, Thursday, October 4, 2007 11:45 AM

Facebook is growing rapidly. The site is now 43 million strong, and a rash of third-party software programs is making it even stickier. Indeed, third-party development is supposed to be a big part of the company's future, but no one has made that model profitable yet.

"Yet" is important, because it's still early days. That said, Facebook's total universe is quite small compared to the billions of people with Web access. That reality seems to be lost in the gold rush that has become Facebook apps. Very few developers report earning tens of thousands of dollars on the apps they create, and even these must cover the cost of hosting applications on their own Web servers.

Nevertheless, RockYou and Slide, the site's most prolific third-party developers, believe that being "a barnacle" on Facebook, is a business model for the future. "This is a completely new channel of delivering content to users and letting them communicate," said RockYou CEO Luke Tokuda. "Owning that over the long stretch can be worth a lot." Sure, if Facebook is able to rise to and maintain the status of being the Web's de facto social network. For that to happen, Facebook really has to become the Google of social networks. It's got a long way to go.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »