Facebook rolls out its new credits currency for buying facebook poker chips, farmville cash, and other in game currencies

Facebook has rolled out it's new 'facebook credits' currency recently in hopes of implementing their vision of bringing a single universal currency to facebook that can be used in every game and application. Some of the earliest companies to join in and start using the facebook credits system has been Crowdstar, maker of popular games like Happy Aquarium, Zoo Paradise, and Happy Island, as well as Zynga Game network, who brought us Zynga Texas Holdem Poker, Farmville, Mafia Wars and a slew of other applications.

Facebook's reasoning is that by creating a universal currency under their Facebook platform that users can use to buy anything from tractors in Farmville to facebook poker chips in Zynga Poker to fish food in Happy Aquarium with the click of a button and the transfer of a few credits, as opposed to logging into their paypal accounts or whipping out their credit cards each time. This ease of transaction, they say, will increase sales of virtual items in the game because it takes away some of the hurdles to purchasing them.

When a player loses all his facebook chips for example, he may be more apt to buy more if all it takes is a click of a button rather than finding his wallet, taking out his credit card, and entering his personal information each and every time. And if that same player got tired of facebook poker and decided to switch over and play some Happy Island later in the evening, he could buy coins in their game with same ease and speed.

Sounds great right? Who doesn't like making things easier? Well this new system comes with a price for game developers: a whopping 30% of all transactions will now go to Facebook for the privilege of using their facebook credits currency. Facebook claims that the increase in sales will more than compensate for the cut in revenue that will now to go Facebook. This model, however, is brand new and unproven at the moment and it will probably be some time before we see the majority of developers switching over exclusively to facebook credits.

For the time being we are likely to see game makers tiptoe into the new virtual currency by rolling it out to one or two games and analyzing the feedback and conversion numbers. It will be interesting to see how willing both gamers and game developers are to assimilate into Facebook's virtual currency of the future.