Like grizzled miners panning for gold on a river high in the Sierras, Facebook applications developers have been toiling away, trying to figure out how to make money from the millions of people who use their apps every day. Those developers who focus on games are starting to find gold — by which I mean revenue gained from doing things like selling virtual goods in exchange for real money.

Various estimates given to me by developers themselves and other sources peg some applications as making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month — this is money that a connected investor tells me Facebook itself isn’t even fully aware of. A few apps below are notably profitable, and these are self-funded small teams, not large, venture-backed companies.

One of the first to really start hitting pay dirt, I hear from various developers, is (fluff)friends — a game reminiscent of the Japanese Tamagochi digital pets that you need to care for to prevent from virtually dying. In (fluff)friends, you choose a free virtual pet (or buy a fancier one) and display it on y Read the full article