Build, or perhaps buy. In July, RockYou acquired Speed Racing, one of the top games on Facebook. But RockYou, in diverting its attention from its rivalry with Slide, will face well-funded competitors in startups Zynga and SGN. By the time all this becomes a serious business, isn't it just as likely Electronic Arts will be the Electronic Arts of social games?

"I already have users complain that they can't find apps again on the new profile after first using them. the latest changes will make it even harder," writes one developer. Another: "Yup, this is a very intense change. And pretty useless from a user experience point of view. Hopefully they roll it back immediately or it was just a mistake."

The list is topped by an widget called Mob Wars, which exhorts users to "Join the Mafia, and start your own mob. Band together with your friends to become the most powerful force in the elite criminal underworld of Facebook." DeveloperAnalytics says Mob Wars' users return to its page 60 times a day. Facebook's most popular application, Slide's FunWall, only shows up fifth on the list, because users load its pages just two or three times a day. Here's what DeveloperAnalytics didn't account for in running the numbers: Slide's opening an office in New York to sell its inventory to major brands, while Mob Wars ads ask if you want to take an IQ challenge.

Hansen has a long, adversarial history with Google, going back at least four years to when he warned Google, eBay, DoubleClick and Visa of a vulnerability being used by "phishers," fraudsters who create fake emails and websites to look like trustworthy domains in order to steal user data. eBay, DoubleClick and Visa fixed the problem within weeks. Hansen says Google still hasn't. Or perhaps it simply hasn't agreed to pay Hansen's consulting fee — think it's a coincidence that eBay's now a customer of his? — and he's just playing hardball. Either way, careful where you get your widgets — and your security advice.

Last fall, Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook, along with an advertising deal. That wasn't because it was a popular social network, but because the tech press was talking up Facebook as a platform for social applications — a Windows for widgets.

Facebook's platform has fallen far short of that promise. The successful apps widgetmakers created in the first year of the platform's existence succeeded through spammy viral tactics, not by being particularly useful or fun for Facebook users. Social-games maker Zynga, for example, makes its games easier to win for users who invite their friends to play. Facebook began changing its platform rules to discourage such tactics in January. This summer, it brought out the stick, suspending popular applications like Top Friends for violations.

Now comes the carrot, in the form of the fbFund. To taste Facebook's cash, developers must meet a specific set of criteria from Facebook. We've translated them from PR-speak below.

Facebook's criteria:

• Originality of Concept: Does the application introduce a great idea in a new and unexplored area?
• Market: Is this application targeted to key audiences or meet compelling market needs?
• Social/Useful: Does the application enable people to interact with each other? Does it deliver real value to users (including entertainment)?
• Expressive: Does the application allow people to share more information?
• Intuitive: Is the application compelling and easy to use? Does it have a well-thought-out user experience?
• Potential: Can it be a real business someday?
• Team: Do you believe this team can execute and is driven to succeed?

Facebook's criteria, translated:

• Originality of Concept: Does the application do more than bring a ripoff of a popular MySpace feature to Facebook? You know, the kind we can have an intern copy between yawns?
• Market: Would you use the app if it weren't created by you?
• Social/Useful: No really, would you?
• Expressive: Does the application allow people to share more information? Will it advance peace talks in the Middle East?
• Intuitive: Is the application easy to use? For a drunk frat boy at UCLA?
• Potential: Can it be a real business someday? Do you know what a real business is?
• Team: Do you believe this team can execute or do you we need to execute your team?

(Photo by Bill in Ash Vegas)

Facebook has been punishing widgetmakers for some time now on its platform, banning them here and there, for the most opaque of reasons. Widgetmakers should probably glad to hear the favoritism is at least codified now, and comes in the form of a carrot, not just a stick. But they aren't that happy. There is resentment among some widgetmakers over the politicking gaining preference on Facebook's platform will now likely require: "[We are] in the business of satisfying users every day, not lobbying for subsidies." No wonder Facebook put Elliot Schrage, a thoroughly political former think-tanker, in charge of the platform.

Zynga makes its games easier to win for users who successfully spam their friends into signing up to play. See the above image for how Zynga does this with Attack, its version of world-concquering game Risk. The problem for Zynga and its new investors: The executives who run Facebook's platform don't like this kind of viral growth. In a blog post Monday, Facebook's Paul Jeffries explained:

Facebook is about empowering and connecting people through the sharing of information. That’s undermined if users who receive an invitation or other communication suspect it was sent for an ulterior motive, such as gaining points in a game.

Yesterday, Jeffries' thoughts became rules for the Facebook platform. According to Inside Facebook,

Applications are no longer allowed to “create artificial or inappropriate incentives to use Facebook features (including, for example, sending requests and adding profile boxes).

In the past few weeks, Facebook has temporarily banned apps by top widgetmakers Rock You and Slide, and has punished other popular app makers too, making it clear that widgetmakers which break Facebook's ever-changing platform rules — "crack its code," so to speak — don't get away with it anymore.

That is, unless they're announcing funding from Kleiner Perkins on a day dedicated to convincing Facebook developers that such a sweet deal could happen for them, too.

• Stay up to date with Facebook’s changes to their guidelines, especially in the Developers Wiki.
• If a rule is ambiguous, err on the conservative side. Don’t push the limits.
• Look at other apps, but be wary about borrowing.
• If Facebook has taken any action, As soon as you identify the issue, alter your code and contact Facebook to let them know.
• Focus on building highly engaging apps.
• If you feel like your app is in the clear, spend your time working on the new profile redesign!

If that's the case, Zuck needs to hurry up and buy in. Venture capital for Facebook-application startups is drying up. One way Facebook could make its hangers-on flush again would be with a payments system which allows users to buy and sell things — two activities we've heard many experts consider crucial to any economy.

VCs already were asking why should I not worry about Facebook copying [your widgets]. But it was a theoretical question. Now, it is practical and amplified. I think that Facebook has really killed the potential for investment in the platform or the attractiveness to entrepreneurs. I am unaware of a single VC investment in a Facebook app company post the new regime (Sheryl, Elliot, policy enforcement). and now this will definitely affect matters. The last two VC investments I believe were Friends For Sale and SGN [Social Gaming Network] — doubt either investor is happy nor would they do the same deal again.

If our widgetmaker source is correct, it is bad news for at least two Facebook hangers-on — Zynga, a widgetmaker and SocialMedia, an ad-network for Facebook widgetmakers. Both are trying to prove him wrong by raising a new round of financing.

A source tells us SocialMedia founder Seth Goldstein spent last week in New York trying to raise $20 million. A VC in the community confirms he's recently heard Goldstein's pitch. Goldstein himself tells us, "We're talking to investors," but he wouldn't confirm the terms.

Zynga, which in January raised $10 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Bob Pittman, is said to have hired a bank in order to find more funding.

Goldstein says that those worried about worried whether Facebook's aggressive moves against Slide will stunt VC investment in startup widgetmakers should worry about top widgetmakers like Slide or its closest rival, RockYou, instead.

These guys wanted to believe there wouldn't be a long tail of apps on the Facebook platform. But Facebook wants lots of little apps relevant to lots of little groups. Two guys from Estonia will be able to beat a team of 45 top flight engineers. Facebook doesn't want three major developers taking over the platform like some kind of CBS, NBC and ABC. Top Facebook apps aren't all going to be made South of Market.

Remember, Goldstein's a Facebook bull because his business depends on it. But one way to read his comment is as a confirmation that no one — including VCs — should expect widgetmakers to turn into large media companies. There may be a future on the Facebook platform, but last year's frenzy that once led HotorNot founder James Hong to declare the Facebook platform "the new Internet"? It's over.

"Yes, we view this feature as directly competitive to a relatively small part of our Top Friends functionality," Slide's Keith Rabois told us. "A developer on any platform must expect that their popular, but simple, features will be absorbed into platform over time."

But none of this has the salesman in Rabois down. He goes on:

You can see that Top Friends has a very large number of complex features that have a complicated back-end (Awards, Visual Personality, Music, world-class skins) — we expect those will continue to be long-term strategic advantages over other large developers and the platforms themselves

The secret of social networking revealed: world-class skin! We always suspected as much.

Rival widgetmaker Slide went through similar traffic troubles a couple weeks ago when Facebook shut down its popular Top Friends app over privacy concerns. But in an earlier conversation, Slide executive Keith Rabois told us that in instead of buying up smaller apps, Slide is pursuing a different strategy:

Slide is in the business of building deeply engaging branded applications, at the same level of complexity and quality as a destination website, and is not interested in assembling a broad portfolio of light weight applications that are merely impression-drivers in an ad network.

Slide rival Rock You's Super Wall saw traffic plummet 70 percent in the last week. InsideFacebook's Justin Smith speculates the dip is due to "some kind of punitive action against the application" over privacy concerns by Facebook, "perhaps by restricting feed access or by lowering the application’s notification or invitation limits." Another source tells us Flixster, the widgetmaker behind the Movies app, is going through similar punishment from Facebook over privacy concerns.

• Track 1: User Experience
• Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More — Learn how to cope with us killing all the viral tricks you used to get users to add your applications.
• Integrating Facebook Connect into your Website — See how easy it is to let our users use all your features and stay on our site, as our users. We're the platform; you're the app, bitch.
• Building Great Applications on Facebook — We'll discuss guiding principles and best practices. For example: no more apps based on R.L. Stine characters.
• Design and User Experience at Facebook — Hear directly from the Facebook Design team on how we think about design and how little we think of yours.

• Track 2: Technical
• Advanced App Building — It's easy to build a simple Facebook app in a couple hours, but you'll just be embarrassing yourself and annoying our users. In this talk, learning the caching features of FBML, advanced features of FBJS, smart uses of the API, and more.
• Feed and Social Distribution — With the new Facebook profile, you won't be able to spam users into submission. Learn how to design great Feed stories!
• Building to Facebook Scale — Facebook handles hundreds of millions of requests per day. Your apps probably can't. We'll try to help you fix that.
• Made for Mobile — Mobile devices are opening up and creating new opportunities. For Apple iPhone developers. Why are you here?

• Track 3: Business
• Building a Business on Facebook / Metrics & Analytics — Learn everything about how to build a business on Facebook Platform from developers who are doing it. This way you'll believe its possible, and they'll be flattered by our attention.
• Marketing your Application on Facebook — You've developed an application. Now what? This session will cover how to trick users into thinking their friends won't like them anymore if they don't install it.
• Entrepreneurship on Facebook Platform — In this session you'll hear from industry luminaries in venture capital and seasoned, multi-company entrepreneurs who owe us favors or are living off past successes and have nothing else to do.
• fbFund: A Look Inside — Seeding Opportunity on Facebook Platform — Learn about the inner workings of fbFund and see what the grant winners are developing so you can spend all your time copying them while some developer in Austin who stayed away from this pointless gabfest actually builds something no one else saw coming.