Facebook has announced that it intends to fund applications. In a twist that is sure to turn heads; facebook is again changing traditional processes. Facebook is offering to pay up to $250,000 to software developers who create applications for the facebook platform.

The new incentive was announced Monday evening by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at TechCrunch 40. This new fund is part of a $10 million fund financed by Accel Partners and The Founders Fund, 2 venture capital firms already connected to the Facebook.

“We are just looking for innovative and disruptive things,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t think we can build all these applications ourselves.”

Accel happens to be one of Facebook’s biggest stockholders, while The Founders’ Fund is run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, an early investor in the company who remains on its board of directors.

The facebook fund will give grants ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 to developers interested in building applications for the platform. The awards will be determined by a panel that includes Marc Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Accel partner Jim Breyer, who also sits on Facebook’s board.

Any developer who hasn’t already raised venture capital will be eligible to apply for the grants. Recipients must agree to give Accel and The Founders Fund the first chance to invest in any business that sprouts from the applications placed on Facebook. Some programmers will not like this option; others will find it a godsend.

This is a very innovative way to further encourage developers to create useful applications for the facebook platform. If people were not paying attention to the facebook f8 platform before; they will now. I suppose part of the reason for facebook doing this is to raise the usefulness of facebook applications, and remove friction points for creative programmers.

Developing sophisticated applications takes significant amount of time, energy and money. They are acting as a connector for motivated programmers, entrepreneurs and financial resources. Many programmers simply don’t have the financial resources to make coding sophisticated applications financially viable; this could potentially change that.

Facebook is smart enough to know that they can’t create all the applications that users would want. They are focused on the platform itself. It is smart to tap the collective brain pool that resides outside of facebook and bring in applications from people that have knowledge in specific verticals. This is another critical step to allow facebook to grow at an even faster rate. New applications will attract even more users.

The facebook fund will create quite a buzz in the business and technology sectors. Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of Product Marketing and Operations of Facebook, will be handling fbFund internally for Facebook.

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