Not much of a post, but just an open question.

I get why facebook, apple, and others open their platforms to developers, it makes total sense. But what is in it long term for the app developers? What is the end game? Who is making this work from the developer side?

We have one foot in the iPhone application game, as do hundreds of others, but only a few companies seem to be making money from their applications…namely the ones that sell the app outright to the user.

Paid downloads right now are the dominant way that developers are going to make money. There are other ways to make money with an application. But the market is still very, very young, and we still need to be very, very careful. The iPhone is a beautifully designed device, and it would be a shame if advertising [on the iPhone] became like a lot of the Flash, interactive, interruptive, crap ads we see on the Web, quite frankly. If that happens, we’ve failed. I know some ad agencies aren’t going to like this, but quite frankly, we have to keep the interests of the user and developer in mind. (Via here)

And lately, it seems that the once white hot facebook app market is cooling way down. Big guys like Slide and RockYou are getting slapped by facebook, the once super-cool hack-athons are now totally lame, and even those companies brokering the application ads are struggling to make ends meet.

So where is this all going?