People are incredibly fickle. Wasn't myspace around this 'hype' status last year? What website will be next year? Probably not facebook.

Myspace is still huge (and growing), but Facebook appears to be much smarter and their platform is very important (especially to other startups).

plus you can't make a Myspace app :)

Why? Not disagreeing at all, but I'm curious about further explanation.

If nothing else, it's an amazing distribution opportunity. People are building simple little apps and getting millions of users practically overnight (and making a surprising amount of money!).

How much money are we talking? I was under the impression that writing facebook apps is not really a way to make money. After all it's not a simple task to incorporate adverts.

People on google are looking for stuff. They'll click on ads if it looks like they'll find the stuff. On facebook people aren't looking for stuff. They're looking for interactions..... with other humans.... not with adverts.

Sure, if you can build a big app and then sell it to a company that just wants to 'brand' it and get some exposure that's cool, but I'm pretty skeptical you can make a 'surprising amount of money'. Care to share some examples?

A lot more than you would guess, but the details are all private (so I can't share examples, though I know of several).

Surely you can share ballpark figures :)

The advertising networks make the real money, they get to take half of what everyone else makes.

The usual is more like 20-30% override for advertising networks. Still a fair chunk of change though.