Recent Facebook announcement to allow real money gambling in UK has stirred up the gambling industry as a whole. According to the latest news coming up - Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has announced that

it may open its platform to real-money online gambling in United Kingdom. This new change is expected to happen soon in the first quarter of 2012.

Currently Facebook is engaged in exploratory talks with a number of UK operators and is considering offering an initial eight licenses to as many UK operators who are looking to roll out such gaming apps on the Facebook platform. Facebook has already started hiring staff for this new initiative.

When asked about the new initiative of Facebook offering real money gambling, Facebook spokesman commented, "We're always in discussions with companies about lots of different ideas, but we don't comment on future plans or speculation."

The operators who are likely to used Facebook for real money gambling are Gamesys, the owner of sites like jackpotjoy.com, botemania.com and iwi.com; and 888 Holdings, the online casino, poker and bingo gaming giant. However, details like age barriers, payment methods or revenue sharing between Facebook and the companies are not yet cleared. Many experts speculate that Facebook could be using UK as a testing platform for similar initiatives in other countries as well.

Facebook has selected UK for its new initiative to offer real money gambling because gambling legislation in UK is very strict and every operator has to follows the guidelines in order to operate in UK. However such is not the case with US. Online gambling is illegal in most states though legalization efforts are underway.