Why do Facebook apps tend to be crummy?

A few years ago when Facebook announced their app api, I didn't look too closely at it but I rather assumed that it would take a few months and there would be a bunch of nasty little apps available along with a few good ones. It does not seem to me that this has happened. Instead there were lots of nasty little games, and a few every-so-slightly-less-nasty ones.

Why is this?

My theory is that it is because Facebook treats these apps as distinctly second class citizens. Facebook themselves only wants a lot of users and a lot of pageviews. Anything else is optional. Their money comes from advertising, so they want lots of that. Apps are going to be helping to drive some of the advertising, but ads on those app pages are going to be less valuable. If I'm paying for the privilege of playing some little game, I'm less likely to be looking around the page for other fancy things to click on. Things which will take my attention away from the little game I just paid for.

Instead, if Facebook acted like they wanted to be the next global computing platform then these little applications would be easier to build than a typical web site, they would be easier to monitize, and as a result they would be of higher quality. Amazon and Google both share revenue when you do things that help them. I don't know how big that is at Amazon right now, but at one time it was huge. At Google it is a significant portion of their business model. Facebook puts ads on ever page (or at least seems to). They could easily track how many impressions each app delivered, and split the ad revenue for those impressions with the app author.

What would that do for Facebook? They'd be giving away money! But I think they would encourage the production of higher quality apps (as well as a veritable ton of lower quality ones) that are not big enough to warrant their own billing.

There was talk of Facebook being the next big computing platform. I don't see this happening. iOS and Android seem to be the next big computing platforms. I think that the fact that it is obvious how to make money selling an iPhone app accounts for part of that.