How To Monetize A Social Web Application

What’s the secret monetization strategy that all the large web startups? That’s the question I was looking to answer when I first started writing about the Facebook platform when it opened up over two years ago and after listening to one web luminary after the other I realized there really is no secret sauce to making money on the social web: you’re either selling ads or selling a product. Why was it that all the executives were speaking as though there was a secret monetization strategy that was just around the corner?