Inside Facebook

While Facebook hasn’t said much about fbFund since Mark Zuckerberg announced it last fall, that’s about to change this week: Facebook is set to announce the first round of fbFund recipients at f8 08 this Wednesday.

The fbFund was set up by Facebook, Accel, and Founders Fund to provide strategic grants for developers building applications Facebook wants to see. Grants range in size from $25k to $250k. By taking the money, developers don’t give up any equity, but they do give a right of first refusal on any future investments to Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel. (I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Kleiner Perkins eventually invest in some fbFund companies, since new partner Chi-Hua Chien used to manage the fbFund for Accel.)

The first wave of fbFund recipients will reveal a lot about Facebook’s own vision for the Platform. I wager that many will be building different types of applications than those which are the most popular today. Facebook is full of deep thinkers who want to see entire industries transformed as more services move onto the social graph.