Notoriously, Apple has very hard lines when it comes to incentivised actions - certainly when it comes to incentivised downloads.

Facebook, however, is happier to embrace some aspects of the business model.

Indeed, it's now relaxing previous restrictions, allowing developers to create offerwalls that use their own in-game currency, alongside official Facebook Credits.

Paid to play

"...these offers can be a valuable additional source of revenue by helping them monetize users that may not otherwise pay for virtual currency," sagely notes Facebook's Abhishek Doshi, on the company's developers blog.

"Today we're launching in-app currency offers, which lets developers award users with their own in-app currency (e.g., Fred Currency in Fred's game) upon completing an offer."

In terms of how the system works, Facebook enables developers to take deals from Offerwall and TrialPay's Dealspot.

These provide offers such as watching videos or signing to up to Netflix, Flixster and credit cards etc, the payback being you get virtual currency, or Facebook Credits for such actions.

Obviously, for developers, being able to offer their own currency provides a lot more flexibility compared to Facebook's official virtual currency, which is more comparable, being available across hundreds of games.

"We hope this new product provides you an additional source of revenue, and we look forward to seeing how you incorporate this new functionality into your apps," Doshi adds.

If only Apple was as forthcoming...

[source: Facebook]