Facebook provides a social platform for a sizable chunk of the Earth’s total population, and the company has a naturally big impact on the economy. A fresh report released today by the University of Maryland Business School reveals some  new insight into the social networking giant’s gaming ecosystem, which apparently helped create directly and directly something around 1820,000 new jobs.

The study was conducted as a part of a partnership with Facebook, and led by Il‐Horn Hann, an associate professor of information systems.

“The researchers found the market for Facebook apps has directly created 53,000 new jobs in the software companies that design the apps. Zynga, maker of the popular Farmville game, now has more than 2,000 employees and an estimated value of $15‐$20 billion, according to the study.”

Breaking this figure down, app developers account for roughly 53,000 of the new jobs, and the Facebook gaming economy created another 129,000 jobs.  Overall this micro-industry, not so small evidently, has funneled $12.19 billion in wages and benefits into the U.S economy.

Facebook itself is doing well too. A new report suggests that its revenue doubled to $1.6 billion in first half of the year.
Both Facebook and the gaming industry are becoming major players in the U.S economy, with mobile being one of the biggest drivers. On its own the mobile space is generating tens of billions of dollars; a number that’s steadily growing as gamers flock to new platforms – 40,000 social gamers and counting. From the rise 1972 Magnavox Odyssey,1977 Atari 24600 and solitary gaming to social gaming and social mobile gaming, our Kristina Farrah explained how this multibillion industry got to where it is now. And it’s now slowing down either, considering Zynga and its countparts on other platforms will be competing in a $20BN market by 2014.