Social networking sites are doing wonders for third-party businesses, allowing them to market and interact with customers as never before. And many application developers are generating serious revenue through games hosted on sites such as Facebook. But the social networks themselves are not making nearly enough money from this activity.

That’s the message from a new report entitled “Follow the Money: An Analysis of Business Strategies and Dealmaking in Social Media”. Authored by Lauren Rich Fine, a former Merrill Lynch analyst who is now director of research for ContentNext Media, the report argues that social networking sites, and Facebook in particular, need to get much more aggressive about monetising their traffic. Read more