Salesforce.com is an on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution vendor. It has an open platform for developers to  create applications. Currently there are over 590 applications available and developers can sell/distribute their applications through the AppExchange website.

It was created in 1999, a long time before Facebook.

So, it is interesting to highlight the similarities between Facebook and Salesforce.com. What Salesforce.com did for the B2B market, Facebook is doing it for the B2C market. But, we can’t sell applications through the Facebook plateform.

Will Facebook enable a buy/sell plateform? Will Facebook create an Applications Marketplace?

For the moment, we don’t have clear information about that, but we have some clues:

• Facebook is going to fund some of the best applications
• Facebook may propose an advertisement solution for the developers
• Applications stats are now included in the developer dashboard
• Facebook is going to translate its interface in several languages

So, at some point, Facebook will try to create more opportunities by enabling such a marketplace for applications.

1. Know the Facebook Platform.
   It can seem obvious but you need to well understand the Facebook platform and API. Learn FBML, FQL and FBJS in order to embed your application in Facebook. The difficulty is that the current official and unofficial documentation is scarce and not easy to understand.
2. Read the TOS.
   It is better to know the Facebook platform Terms of Service. Imagine that your application is successful but that you have to close because you violated the point 54.3.2.a of Facebook Terms Of Use? To avoid this, read the TOS carefully. For example you can’t keep users information in your databases more than 24h.
3. Buy a hosting plan.
   You have to host your own application. As a consequence you must take into account that building a Facebook application is not only time-consuming but money-consuming. Take the hosting price into account in your budget.
4. Buy a domain name.
   It is not expensive and the name you choose is not very important as the final user will not see it often. Also, take the domain name price into account in your budget.
5. Maximize the Social Graph.
   You need to think how you take advantage of the Facebook Social Graph, i.e. the fact that potentially thousand of people can use your application. How will you spread the word? How will you monetize your application?
6. Prepare your Business Plan.
   You need a small business plan. It is very important because from Day 1, you will spend time and money to support your application. You need to plan how and when you will make money to refund your expenses and make some profits.
7. Forecast your bandwidth need.
   You have to forecast your application utilisation. If your application becomes popular very quickly, your initial host plan will be rapidly inefficient and you application will suffer. As a consequence, when you first choose your host, be sure that you can switch from basic plan to more advanced hosting plans.
8. Be addictive.
   In order to generate revenue, your application must be addictive. If the users just install your application and never go back to it, it is useless. With the new Facebook user activity statistics, only users using your application on a daily basis are counted as Daily Users.
9. Be simple.
   To attract more users, you should create an easy-to-use and straightforward application. Many different people will use your application, and the vast majority are not IT engineer
10. Take advantage of the user data.
    An application is useful and addictive if it create value based on the user and the user’s friend data. Personalize your application according to each user.

Maybe this list will discourage some of you but think about the differences between starting a business on Facebook, or on the Internet. You will quickly understand that Facebook gives you all the tools (social graph, Facebook plateform) to ease this difficult process. That’s why every person motivated enough can take the plunge and try to build a successful business on Facebook!

Good Luck

This new blog creation coincides with the TC40 Keynote Conversation with Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook CEO and founder). According to this conversation, Facebook is creating a new company fbFund with Accel and Founders Fund.

$10 million will be allowed to the fund and each selected start-up (dedicated to create Facebook applications) will be granted from  $25 to $250 thousand. The board of advisors will be composed of several known people (Linkedin, Google…), Mark Zuckerberg and Chamath Palihapitiya (VP of Product Marketing and Operations of Facebook).

Not a lot of information exists on the Internet regarding the creation of a Facebook application and the business around it. This blog is focused on giving its readers the best available information on how to become an entrepreneur thanks to Facebook.

This will be very useful as information is filtered and not available to everyone. For example, I went to the London Facebook Developers Garage last week, and I met Chamath Palihapitiya. My first question was the following:
“Will Facebook fund the best applications?”
And he answered:
“No, but we are working with success stories applications to build a comprehensive guide explaining how to build a business around Facebook.”

As we can see today, the answer is YES in fact…

So, let’s make the most out of Facebook, let’s create as many opportunities as possible with this growing Facebook platform, and let’s reveal your Entrepreneur Face!