14 DAY TRIAL // With the economy looking the way it does, there's no surprise that people will cling on to any sign of hope. And when studies show up saying that Facebook is doing a better job at creating new jobs than the US government and that the site, specifically its platform, alone is responsible for creating perhaps more than 200,000 jobs, it's easy to get carried away.
But as is always the case with these types of studies, which look at the economic impact of a technology, site, event, behavior and so on, but rely on quite a number of estimates, the final results may be questionable.
A study (PDF) by University of Maryland researchers shows that Facebook apps have generated a staggering amount of jobs and value.
"The proliferation of Facebook and mobile technology applications has spawned an entirely new industry - dubbed the 'App Economy' -- that has added at least 182,000 new jobs and contributed more than $12.19 billion in wages and benefits to the U.S. economy this year," the study found.
"Using more aggressive estimates, the Facebook App Economy created a total of 235,644 jobs, adding a value of $15.71 billion to the economy," it added.
The researchers looked at the number of companies creating Facebook apps, 148, and the average number of employees each has and came up with the first number, 53,434 people employed directly by these companies.
Then, they looked at all of the other jobs that are supporting these people and estimated how many more jobs were created to cater to them. This is how they end up with the final numbers.
But it's hard to actually verify these numbers. Tens of thousands of software developers would have worked on something else were it not for Facebook apps.
There is actually a shortage of software developers in Silicon Valley but also elsewhere so they probably would not have had a problem finding somewhere to work.
It is likely that Facebook has spurred the creation of some jobs that would not have been created otherwise, but the impact is likely smaller than what the study says. That said, the App Economy is real and you only need to look at Zynga and all of the money it's making to know it.