'Current Facebook growth only comes from casual games'

"Something is wrong in the Facebook developer community," Farmer said in a blog post earlier this week. "Starting in March I began noticing that the level of activity in the Facebook developers forum was dropping sharply."

Farmer reckons, using his stats tracking developer interest in the platform, that less and less developers are looking to tap into Facebook's vast userbase - except when it comes to gaming.

He points out that "Networks like Zynga and Social Gaming Network have cropped up in the last few months and have made it their business to consolidate the game space on Facebook" and adds that gaming is "the only real vertical that has found success on the platform".

Part of this will be due to a variety of reasons, he adds - developers are consolidating, and Facebook has moved to discourage the number of 'spammy' apps on the service, instead creating measures which more actively encourage entertaining and fun apps.

All of which suggests that Facebook, while becoming tougher for some sectors looking to take advantage of it, is still ripe for casual games firms to utilise with apps specifically designed for the platform.

We've already seen a number of movile studios, from Digital Chocolate to Distinctive Developments, rework their popular games into Facebook apps - who will be next to stake a gaming claim in the social networking world?