I think it's pretty widely acknowledged that the gaming crash of the '80s was due to a glut of horrible software, since there was no approval process, crap flooded the market, and since people had no way to judge what was crap, they bought random games and hated them, and therefore stopped buying. I'm not sure this is relevant to Facebook.

Nintendo came along with an approval process (Nintendo Seal of Quality) and made games popular again. Sort of makes Apple look sensible for all their iPhone shenanigans.

I think it's relevant to Facebook, given that they're heavily focused on third-party apps, especially games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.

In the '80s, companies like Atari collapsed because third parties were publishing large amounts of crap for their platforms, and this ultimately undermined the platform itself. The increasingly common crap apps and scams on Facebook seem to parallel this.

In fact it may be worse for Facebook, because the Nintendo solution would be much more difficult to apply. With video games, the revenue stream for both the platform developer and the third-party developer comes from end users. But with social media, the revenue stream comes entirely from the third-party affiliates - who would pay to use Facebook? If the people pushing the crapware are also the ones paying your bills, it's a lot harder to dictate quality standards.

I think the endgame here is sites like Facebook having to decide between attempting to directly monetize the use of their service, or opening the floodgates to spam. Either option will drive users away.