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Facebook posted a set of small announcements on its developer blog Wednesday, most notably a call for alpha testers for the virtual currency platform that it's finally launching after much speculation.

"We are currently conducting an alpha test in which select applications can accept Facebook Credits from users," the post wrote. "Our 250 million users can now buy Facebook Credits in 15 currencies and we believe that, as Facebook Credits become more broadly available on Platform, they will meaningfully improve developer monetization and provide a great experience for users."

Interested developers are encouraged to contact Facebook.

Facebook has also announced that developers who want to advertise the applications they have built to run on its platform, which it originally launched over two years ago, now have a new option. They can opt to target their ad to users who are (or aren't) connected to one of their applications already: to encourage existing users to try a new app from the same developer, for example, or to court totally new users.

New options for Facebook developers' ad targeting.

(Credit: Facebook)

Huge businesses have already been built atop the developer platform: in fact, some reliable assessments have concluded that, at least for now, the apps on the platform combined make more money than Facebook itself.

It might be Facebook's worst-kept secret.

It's become increasingly clear in recent weeks that Facebook is finally inching toward the launch of a micropayment platform. The social site has been expanding the presence of its virtual currency, which Facebook debuted last November when it changed the monetary units for its "Gifts" product into "credits" rather than U.S. dollars.

Credits are now bundled with some promotional items in the Gifts app. And soon, select developers on the Facebook Platform will be able to start working "credits" into their own applications, in a move that could lead to a lucrative new revenue stream for Facebook, which currently relies on an advertising-based business model. First reported by a number of tech blogs, the company has confirmed this development.

There's been talk of Facebook's planned foray into the e-commerce sector for well over a year now. But the "credits" product that's being released to developers soon appears to be quite different from the Facebook payment platform that followers of the company have anticipated. As recently as last fall, Facebook's plans--reportedly called "Facebook Wallet"--were something much more like a straight-up, PayPal-like transaction platform.

At least initially, that's likely not the case.

Facebook's official comment on whether this is a shift in company strategy is coy. "We think enabling developers to accept these credits as a form of payment has the potential to create exciting new use cases for users and developers," spokesman David Swain said in an e-mail. "We do not have details to share at the moment because this will be a very small alpha, only a handful of developers, but will likely share more as we evaluate the results of the test."

Swain declined to comment on whether Facebook would ever pursue a more standard e-commerce product like what many had assumed the "wallet" would be. But sources with knowledge of Facebook's product development say that what started as the "wallet" eventually turned into the "credits" system. According to one well-placed source in the virtual-currency sector, there's been a clear change from Facebook's earlier plans to foray into the transaction and payment space.

"It's an absolute change in strategy," the source said. "So, they're not competing with PayPal now."

Virtual currencies, with silly, often casino-inspired names and an unfortunate reputation in the mainstream as the way to buy enchanted swords and potions in fantasy role-playing games or to bling out your virtual penguin, don't carry the serious-business gravitas of services such as PayPal. But shifting strategy to a virtual goods platform is a savvy and forward-thinking move on Facebook's part. Since it launched two years ago, Facebook's developer platform has changed and matured a lot.

Most notably, a few app development companies are making an astonishing amount of money without paying Facebook a cent--and most of these are on the games and entertainment side of things. It's probably not a coincidence that those apps--from poker games to virtual pets to the seemingly endless parade of Mafia Wars and Zombie Wars applications--are the ones that would benefit the most from a virtual currency system. In turn, they're the ones from which Facebook could profit the most by taking a cut of revenue.

Facebook's global reach
But the decision to launch a virtual currency is bigger than simply to appeal to games. More importantly, the credits system is a necessary response to Facebook's newfound role as what's effectively a functioning sovereignty. With well over 200 million members now, Facebook has extended its reach well outside the U.S., and the Palo Alto, Calif., company has said that over three-quarters of membership registrations now come from overseas. The concept of "Facebook Wallet" might have sufficed when the majority of its users were dealing in U.S. dollars. That's far from the case now.

"There are currency implications, there are buying power implications, and there are payment provider implications," said Mike Trigg, vice president of marketing at social network Hi5, when asked in an interview about balancing the physical world's diverse economic systems. Hi5 launched a virtual currency called Hi5 Coins late last year.

For Hi5, launching a virtual currency early on was a logical conclusion because much of its user base is international, particularly in Latin America. "You really see market differences, especially for youth, which is really our target audience, in how they can pay for stuff online," Trigg said. "In some countries (credit cards and PayPal) aren't used at all. We see other markets where paying by SMS is the way to get into the system, and we see markets where cash cards and game cards and wire transfers and mailing cash through the mail even are ways that people get real currency into the virtual currency system."

With Facebook's reach significantly broader than Hi5's, the complications are even greater. And with hundreds of millions of people able to use this currency when it's available to all users, this is no enchanted-swords-and-penguins affair. Economists and Web developers alike will want to keep tabs on the expansion of Facebook credits, as they could quickly become the closest thing the Web has seen to a standard monetary unit.

"I think the universal currency wars are going to be on soon," said Lisa Rutherford, president of Twofish, a company that helps developers and companies manage virtual currencies by providing data and analytics.

There are plenty of start-ups that have attempted to launch virtual currencies that would be interoperable across participating developers' and companies' games and other applications. None of them have become legitimate Web sensations, perhaps because of the inherent security concerns in online payments. Facebook already has millions of users' credit card numbers on file from transactions through the Gifts app--its "credits" are in the lead before they even launch in full.

"When everyone was launching, when Spare Change and Jambool were launching virtual currencies three or four months ago, we had an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon," Rutherford said. "We just thought that universal currency needed to come from a big, robust, more stable player. It shouldn't come from a start-up."

At the same time, Facebook's massive size and name brand aren't going to make it immune from the concerns that surround any other e-commerce player. Facebook, suffering from a rash of phishing attacks and the occasional bad press about user privacy and safety, is going to have to be more careful than ever when it comes to security. Virtual economies in general have endured their fair share of scrutiny, too: one of the best known, Second Life's "Linden dollars," took a blow when a wave of scams prompted the virtual world to shut down user-run banks. Regulations still keep them a shadow of their former selves.

Still, if anyone can do this, it's Facebook.

"They might all have grand visions," Rutherford continued, "but you're asking people to trust what's essentially a sovereign banking system, and yeah, it should come from one of the big guys."

You'd think, based on what the blogosphere is saying about dual sets of numbers in Advertising Age and VentureBeat, that Facebook has a new reason to freak out about revenues. Namely, signs point to the fact that the third-party developer platform that Facebook launched two years ago now collectively makes more money than the social network itself.

Well, of course it does.

From some of the headlines, you'd think that it were some sort of Silicon Valley equivalent of humans creating robots that eventually outstrip them in intelligence. While it's sort of amusing to think about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg battling evil robots (cue up some Flaming Lips here), this actually should be a pretty unsurprising conclusion. Estimates indicate that the platform applications put together may make as much as $500 million in 2009, with the advertising-based Facebook pulling in $350 million to $500 million depending on who you ask. (It's a private company. They're allowed to answer that question with nothing more than sneaky smiles.)

Let's look at the latest (vague) figures. When Facebook announced the debut of its long-awaited "verified apps" program last week, the company said there are now more than 52,000 applications on the third-party developer platform--and counting. That's a lot. In other words, if the Facebook platform were a standalone business, I should certainly hope it would rake in a significant amount of money.

Granted, we'd have to crunch a lot of numbers and deal with a lot of variables in order to figure out the exact operating expenses and headcount of the platform. Some applications are created by lone developers living rent-free in a basement, whereas others are created by app development companies that employ dozens of people and pay hefty amounts of cash for office space in those trendy post-industrial lofts in dot-com-friendly neighborhoods.

It gets more complicated. Some apps are the Facebook-inhabiting arms of much bigger social media companies, or are branded advertising or marketing campaigns on behalf of corporations that otherwise have zilch to do with tech. Then there are the development firms, consultants, agencies, and countless investors who also have a stake in it. Facebook itself, last time we checked, still had fewer than 1,000 full-time employees.

Conclusion: I don't know how many people and companies can claim to be on the Facebook platform's payroll, but it's a lot. And considering the platform as a whole has been much more adventurous with revenue strategies than Facebook itself has, I should certainly hope it's been raking in the cash for some time now.

So then there's the assertion brought up by AdAge's Michael Learmonth, that Facebook is pretty much sitting on a goldmine here. Which brings back the evil-robot thinking. Once again, Facebook is dealing with a massive and extremely diverse set of individuals and companies here. Social games manufacturer Zynga may be rolling in cash, but there are loads of other apps on the platform that don't make a cent. Has Facebook let the platform get too big and too amorphous for it to wrangle decent revenues out of it? ("I'm sorry, Mark. I'm afraid I can't do that.")

Which is why there are two things to watch here. One is the rollout of Verified Apps, which may have some unannounced or even under-the-table benefits that Facebook hasn't hinted at yet. Facebook's key terms for Verified Apps acceptance are "trustworthy" and "meaningful." But I wouldn't be at all surprised if "can make money, and can help us do so, too" is an unspoken criterion. Verified Apps will give Facebook the opportunity to work closely with a much more uniform and manageable set of developers and companies who have already shown a decent degree of loyalty to the social network.

Second, there's Facebook's finally-coming-soon (or is it?) Holy Grail of revenues, which is either a virtual currency system for developers or a PayPal-like transaction platform, or maybe a bit of both. The latest signs indicate that Facebook will be expanding the "credits" system it uses for its in-house Gifts application to select developers. Beyond that, it's not clear how it will expand.

With both a potential monetization strategy in place, and a policy (Verified Apps) to keep it from turning into a free-for-all that could start eating up cash rather than pulling it in, Facebook is all set. Or, if you prefer the hyped-up version, it almost has the arsenal in place to take on those evil robots.

On Tuesday night, a Los Angeles Times blog post pointed to an soundbite that Facebook "gaming guru" Gareth Davis produced at the GamesBeat conference in San Francisco: that the company is "looking at" offering a virtual currency to developers. The virtual goods industry, the article notes, is a $1.5 billion behemoth.

This would mean that games and other apps with a presence on Facebook could use a universal "Facebook currency" that would not only be interoperable between apps, it could also line Facebook's pockets with some extra cash. But Davis' language ("looking at") is about as ambiguous as it gets, so my advice to potentially-excited developers would be "don't hold your breath."

What this reminds me of is the once-hyped "Facebook Wallet." Remember that? A few months after the social network launched its developer platform in May 2007, word started to spread that it was also working on a PayPal-like payment system. Executives hinted at it on conference panels. In a high-profile move, Facebook hired Benjamin Ling, the Google engineer who had been instrumental in developing the Google Checkout product. But Ling left after less than a year at the company and returned to Google. Rumors started to spread that Facebook had scrapped the plan entirely.

Once source I talked to earlier this month in the virtual-currency space said that Facebook Wallet never came as close to fruition as some seemed to think it had. "It's not like they ditched it, it's that they never got it off the ground," the source said, adding that some developers were wary of the idea in the first place because of the extra work it would involve with little obvious benefit other than "it's easier."

I'd assume the situation would be similar for a Facebook currency of its own. It'd take a lot of development for a product that developers wouldn't even necessarily want. There is, however, a flip side: Facebook has offered virtual goods of its own, in the form of the "Facebook Gifts" that members can purchase for one another's profiles, since 2007. Late last year, Facebook switched the payment system for Facebook Gifts from U.S. dollars to "credits," making it easier for the site to charge more or less than its previous standard $1 for the virtual items.

It'd obviously be very easy for Facebook to make these credits available to developers. But Facebook's roadmap these days has shown that its focus is on the Facebook Connect component of the platform rather than beefed-up features for embeddable apps. It's also unclear whether developers would want to alter mature products to institute a new virtual currency--or whether they'd all want to be interoperable with competitors.

If you're a Microsoft Outlook user at work, managing your in-box could be one of the most challenging things you have to wrestle with each day. Handling incoming e-mail and categorizing its importance is a skill, and a process people have to learn. There are several third-party apps to help you figure out what's important beyond the stock methods included with the Outlook (colored flagging, and urgency), but many are for the individual, rather than the entire company.

Likewise, as a sender, figuring out how to prioritize the e-mail you're sending to others is a balancing act, and without a real universal system besides writing "urgent," or noting deadlines, whoever's getting your mail might not know what your message is worth. To solve this, a new service called Attent has created a system for enterprise mail systems that assigns a level of importance on each message based on virtual currency. The company showed it off at this morning's Web 2.0 Summit pitch session.

That e-mail about the Denver account can now be given monetary value using Attent's virtual currency system.

(Credit: Seriosity, Inc.)

Each user has his own bank of money and can assign a denomination of a virtual currency called Serios. The company says it got the idea after watching users successfully manage accounts of virtual currency in some of the popular socialized gaming MMORPGs like Second Life and World of Warcraft. The fact that you have a limited amount means that users must ration out their outgoing e-mails, and balance out their spending with that of their colleagues.

The real interesting aspect of this system, beyond its money exchange network, is the back end, which lets employees and managers alike monitor their Serios usage, and each other. There are built-in metrics to help you track what days you're spending the most, who you're giving more money to, and how heavily you're using the system. Part of this is represented in "badges," which are special indicators similar to medals, or the gold star system frequently employed in kindergarten and elementary schools. Attent breaks these medals down into multiple categories, ranging from how long you've used the system, all the way to how long you work without having to check or send e-mails. The badges go on your intra-network profile, along with your name (once included as an e-mail recipient) so others can get an idea of how much experience you have before sending you a message.

Attent seems to want to tackle the problem of prioritizing your own e-mail by putting that responsibility in the hands of others, which could be problematic with that guy in the office who always has the importance on his messages set to high. The one saving grace is that he'll be the first to run out of money, which might help him figure out how to manage his daily allotment of funds. The system reminds me a little bit of Chore Wars (review) for its social nature, although a little bit less motivational. For personal use, there's also Xobni (coverage), which is less about organizing your in-box as much as helping you figure more about the importance of an e-mail based on your past history with the sender.

It's always those little things spotted in a foreign country that I wish I'd grabbed more of to bring back home, like $2 cartoon-print chopsticks from Tokyo, a $3 sack of paprika from Budapest, or $1 bottles of local lavender oil from Zagreb. I may not revisit those places, but I could ask for someone going there to snag some stuff for me. If you're my friend, however, that could interfere with your carefree vacation. Why not ask a stranger instead?

Bringsome is built just for that. Travelers on the site offer to bring back goodies from abroad, while homebound folks describe the goods they'd like. Although global commerce and the Internet seemingly enable you to get anything from anywhere, many local items still can't easily be ordered.

The next time you're in Europe, for instance, please bring me a pile of Niederegger marzipan in kooky fruit and farm animal shapes. The next time I travel, I guess I could pack something only found in San Francisco, like some original 1960s rock posters, or some quirky paintings by local artists. I could deliver an iPhone to the Bringsome user who wants one in Copenhagen, but could he use it there?

Bringsome users ask for and offer stuff from abroad.

Bringsome is a rough draft in pre-beta testing, and it shows. There are currently only 11 ads. The site needs to be more clear about where you're bringing stuff to and from, since only one location is prominent right now. If its execution improves, this is a wonderful concept that really should be built into a travel site with a large community already set up, such as Lonely Planet or iGoUgo. Bringsome should have maps, too.

Of course, Bringsome isn't responsible if you try smuggling something dumb and illegal, like the antique swords sold at Russian airports, or a stash of something ordered at a cafe in Amsterdam.

My-Currency.com, launching at Demo 07 on Thursday, is a complicated solution to a very simple problem: people can't tell if real estate agents are any good.

My-Currency is designed to bust through friends' recommendations and real-estate advertising campaigns in order to help you find the agents with the best knowledge of their market, as shown by how well they predict the outcomes of real estate transactions.

I predict this house will sell for less than asking.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The site is built around a prediction market. It asks agents to predict how much properties will sell for. Agents "wager their reputation," and put in their predicted sales price of houses, as well as conviction levels for predictions. Once properties sell, the system is able to rank the agents who made the predictions.

My-Currency also has an answers system (like the Answers engines on Yahoo and LinkedIn), and awards professionals for replying to users' queries, since bedside manner does count for something in a salesperson.

The site is pretty, but it could be more approachable (although the team was making changes to the user interface as I wrote this). And it's named wrong: If I'm looking for a good real estate agent, I'm more likely to go to rate-an-agent.com, not something with a name that doesn't convey what the site is really about.

But I do love the idea. Real estate agents earn absurd commissions, and there's no real way for customers to gauge an agent's knowledge or performance. This technology could help level the playing field, and that's great.

In the future, CEO Karim Tahawi plans to use the My-currency platform for sites that rate other professionals, like financial advisers and stock brokers.