Facebook launches a new e-commerce platform

[img_assist|nid=8123|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=37] The well-known Facebook has announced that these days it works on an e-commerce platform, which is intended to enable users to pay application developers for some virtual goods, premium services and other offerings.

This news came from Ben Ling, who runs Facebook's platform, at O'Reilly's Graphing Social Networks conference which took place this week in Crystal City. Mr. Ling assures that "a transaction mechanism will enable new business models".

The community of developers is very glad and pleased with this decision. Some of the most popular applications are earning advertising revenue, but it hasn't been easy to get big marketers to experiment. Some gaming applications already sell virtual goods so users can dress up their characters, and Slide sells "premium pokes" to give paying users a more exclusive selection. An e-commerce component would give developers a more stable way to make money--that is, if consumers actually buy the goods.

And that's what a lot of investors are looking for these days. One of such companies has said that it is ready to invest in the company that decided to have a solid revenue model as a whole, not just sites or applications that have a lot of users.

The exact dates have not been announced yet.