Facebook: The 'viral marketplace'

Perry Evans has a fantastic post on Facebook:

Adsense is a brilliant machine, designed to optimize and extract the “transactional lead value” out of every consumer search.

FB app distribution should become a brilliant machine, designed to optimize and extract the “viral network value” out of every social connection they facilitate.

Transactional revenue model - meet your match - it’s the viral network marketplace model. If FB evolves to create the “must be in” marketplace for viral distribution of consumer applications, it will become a really, really important company.

I think that Perry has this exactly right. I'd just add two words to his key point:

"If Facebook evolves to create the “must be in” marketplace for viral distribution of consumer applications and content, it will become a really, really important company."

Why are these two words really important? Check this out:

* "Google is the “must be in” marketplace for search distribution of consumer applications and content."
* "Windows is the “must be in” marketplace for PC-based distribution of consumer applications and content."
* "IBM was the “must be in” marketplace for mainframe distribution of enterprise applications and content."

Yeah, there's gold in them thar hills.