Facebook has emerged as a potential platform for social gaming by hosting some of the most popular online games like Cityville, Texas Holdem Poker, Farmville etc. Many mock casino and betting games have also hit Facebook

in the recent months like Double Down casino, Yazino’s games and Bet Tycoon.  But now it seems that the social network giant is moving towards monetization by offering real money online gambling.

Initially Facebook had refused to accept any advertisement for online gambling operators but has recently opened up to gambling operators in certain countries. According to current Facebook gambling advertisement policy states that “ads that promote or facilitate online gambling, games of skill or lotteries, including online casino, sports books, bingo, or poker, are only allowed in specific countries with prior authorization from Facebook.”

Facebook, hosting more than 800 million active users, offers many virtual money games. Among the major games providers is Zynga Poker which is the biggest free-to-play Web card room in the world, claimed to have over 30 million monthly users though do not offer real money games. According to the latest poker news, when asked about the new Facebook initiative to allow real money gambling, general manager of Zynga Poker, Lo Toney said that “Zynga Poker has no interest in going after the real money space”.

Facebook already offers a virtual currency option known as Facebook Credits, which is used extensively in Facebook apps like social games,   but according to latest poker news, now it is interested to support the exchange of real money in the online gambling market. The free-play social media market offers a huge potential audience for the real-money games with millions of daily users. Online gaming is a huge industry and Facebook initiatives for real money gambling would help in the growth of the industry. With UK coming up first, we expect to see more countries offer online real money gambling in Facebook.