I’m skeptical of the revenue opportunities for third-party applications on Facebook right now. True, Zuckerberg has promised third-party applications that they can keep 100% of the profits they make. But, where are the profits going to come from? It’s not clear if there is significant purchasing intent for users while they are on Facebook. It’s a social application right now- people are on it see what their buddies are doing, not buy stuff (even though there are ‘marketplaces’ popping up in Facebook). Facebook banner ads and flyers have an average 0.04% clickthrough rate, which is quite terrible by any standard. Andrew Chen, a Silicon-Valley VC, offers a solution:
If widget makers are allowed to send traffic a ton of traffic to their own destination sites, that might work well – in that case, it’d make sense to charge the widget makers a cost-per-click for every user leaving the site, similar to the way that Google funnels people OFF the google.com search engine for a fee. That would make Facebook a true traffic acquisition engine.
Sushant's Blog 