Facebook Application Marketplace

Facebook applications are experiencing tremendous growth, for better or worst. It’s not often we get to look at a set of truly astonishing numbers compressed into such a short period of time. InsideFacebook, a blog that has grown to be near the center of this emerging world, has a summary on the growth in the past month.

We’ve gathered data from all the top apps on Facebook now that we’re one month into Platform, and one thing’s clear: Facebook applications have taken off like wildfire. In fact, to the tune of 65 million net application installs over the course of the past 30 days. That’s an average of 2.5 installed applications per every registered Facebook user. And I may even be missing some.

20 applications now sport over 1 million Facebook users. 35 more have over 100,000.

Source: InsideFacebook, "Facebook users add 65 million apps in first month - average of 2.5 per person"

While most are intrigued by the opportunity, it's not entirely clear if the universe of applications will ultimately serve as a platform for doing business. Some companies, however, aren't waiting to find out. So far, there have already been 2 acquisitions for Facebook applications. ReadWriteWeb outlines these purchases noting that, so far, the cited reasons are largely to acquire users or talent. The conclusion puts a finger on the pulse of this matter:

So will Facebook acquisitions continue? I think that's probably highly likely. With more than 38,000 developers already using the Facebook Developer app (which helps you create applications for the platform), buying popular apps is a good way for companies looking to get into the Facebook ecosystem to screen developers. And with the Facebook platform continuing to grow in popularity among its rapidly expanding user base, it seems inevitable that companies will try to buy their way to the top, especially given the relatively cheap price of purchasing Facebook apps (Favorite Peeps, for example, was had for only just over US 4 cents per user).

Source: ReadWriteWeb, “Facebook Acquisitions: Fad or Proof of Platform Success?”

I’m not sure that I would expect the valuation for users to remain consistently low. If anything, would estimate that as the nature of applications evolve into, well, more traditional applications, and developers loose their stage fright regarding monetizing their actions, that the lifetime value of a user will increase significantly. I can say for sure we’re making that bet.

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