Illustration for a Facebook Article

Illustration for a Facebook Article (click to enlarge)

Illustration for an article about Facebook. See excerpt below:

"I’m not sure what it means.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is talking about a new application created by an outside developer that allows Facebook users to throw sheep at one another. The sheep are just a playful digital expression – of, well, who knows what? – that users can send to each others’ online profiles. “Who knew that people would have liked that?” Zuckerberg muses. The sheep could rake in over a million dollars in ad revenue this year.

Launched just three years ago by Zuckerberg – a college dropout and acknowledged hacker who famously turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo in 2006 – Facebook has become THE company of the tech world. An entire industry has sprouted up around the site seemingly overnight, as everyone from software wizards to marketing honchos rush to figure out how to make lots of fast money from a user base that has ballooned to 41 million. In spring 2007, Facebook opened its software platform to applications from outside developers, preempting every major Web 2.0 competitor. Since then, some 80,000 developers have added more than 4,000 new applications, from virtual bookshelves to, yes, sheep throwing. Developer conferences have been selling out, venture funds have formed to hunt for promising Facebook-specific ideas, and more than a dozen advertising networks have popped up to help developers profit from their applications. Instant “experts” are proliferating. Nick O’Neill, 25, started the blog AllFacebook, then hung out a shingle as a consultant. His client list already includes several Fortune 100 companies. “The phone is ringing off the hook,” O’Neill says.

Facebook itself won’t make any money from the sheep-throwing business. Or, in fact, from any of what could turn out to be hundreds or even thousands of other wildly successful new applications now running on its site. Zuckerberg says that’s just fine with him, claiming, “It’s good for the ecosystem, good for the product, and good for the users.”

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