This first venture has two goals. The first is to assist my transition from 7 years as a .net developer to LAMP and the related open source frameworks. It’s been about 5 years since I last touched Linux. The second goal is to learn the Facebook API and develop a facebook application that actually generates revenue without making the user jump through hoops to enjoy my creation.

A Facebook application that generates revenue?

How can that be you ask? With advertisements right? No, god no. Anyone can do that, and, I applaud those that are and are making a profit. It seems Zuckerberg cant figure out how to make money off his own site other than advertisements and the Gifts application. Why haven’t they looked deeply into what Blizzard has done with the 9 million people world wide paying them $10-$15 per month to play World of Warcraft? Facebook is a game, got that Zuckerberg?

Facebook is a game?

My wife has 7 games of scrabulous with just one friend, and many other scrabulous games with others. She thanks me for introducing her. Simply looking at many of the applications on facebook they can be boiled down to games. Whether it be seeing who can create the coolest slide or the coolest wall post it’s a game. However, facebook has only just started to realize this with their Gifts application which has made more than $24 million selling $1 digital gifts. Now, lights should be going off in your head, enough to pay their current 400 employees expanding to 700.

So what’s your game Marc?

Utmost Kudos. It’s 75% complete at this time. Once I’m done I will be either paying for a graphic designer to design the digital assets or giving them a percentage of the revenue. It will be their choice. The other dependency will be my applications implementation of the current beta Facebook Pay Pal like payment gateway. So what is it you ask? An application that creates a competitive atmosphere that has a $0 barrier to entry and fosters honest as well as jokingly pats on the back so to speak. Of course thats the not as high as a birds eye view but you get the point. And, there are other apps vaguely similar, but their implementation is very weak.

So how do I play?

When the application is finished you can simply install the application and start right away. No need to invite friends or fill out stupid surveys for game credits. Now, while it’s not a “game” in it’s traditional definition, it’s a game in the social networking definition. More on that and Utmost Kudos another day.