Today at the SNAP Summit, Lee Lorenzen said something that was both scary and encouraging, and it summed up the current social network platform craze very well. I can’t quote directly, but the gist of it was this: If this is a new era in what could potentially become a new bubble, we’re only at the equivalent stage of just before Netscape had their IPO in 1995.What does that mean? Let the good times roll for developers, programmers, VC’s, business development gurus, accountants, consultants, etc.?I certainly hope not.

At this point, the entire community seems to display and air of confident restraint, of overstating the value of what it’s doing but being careful not to do so by too much.

The mixed messages of the panelists at the SNAP Summit confirmed this, and depending on who you listened to, this is what you may have come away with:

• You can make a lot of money with ads, but not enough to quit your day job.

• You can pay your own salary by putting out an app and running ads, but you can’t build a business.

• Ad networks are working to raise CPM’s so that everyone can make more money.

• Advertising is not the way to go; Instead you should use micropayments.

• Advertising is the way to go, but you need to get a sponsor and be more creative.

• Advertising is not the way to go; Instead you should become an AceBucks affiliate.

• Only simple applications can succeed.

• Only interesting, useful, and complex applications can succeed.

The only non-mixed messages were in the subtext: This is a good thing, and we’re all going to do very, very well. Just follow our advice, and YOU CAN build the next great Facebook application, make a crap-ton of money, and we’ll all be happy.Honestly, there was some very good advice.

The most useful panel was the first, in which those with the most experience fine-tuning Facebook applications gave the rundown on how to optimize for engagement and virality.  (note: Not writing much about that here because my notes for it could make an entire separate article.)

On the less useful end, there was a “state of the platform” speech from FB Platform Lead Ami Vora, which was mostly a rehash of Facebook’s PR material. I will summarize:

“Why is Facebook so awesome? Because we came up with the idea of the Social Graph. And we map it. Nobody else does this. Booya.”

“Sixty billion page views per month. Fifty per user per day. Booya.”

“I’m going to talk about growth. See this graph? It looks like a hockey stick. Booya.”

“I’m going to talk about Facebook’s own applications. Photos is huge. Events is huge. Booya times five.”

“A fifth of Canada is using Facebook. Booya times twenty.”

“We don’t know what percentage of users tag photos…” (what? seriously?)

App-building 101, with Joel Seligstein, was pretty cool. He started with basics but went into specifics when it was question time. I wish Joel had been actually on a panel, or given more than half an hour to talk, because I felt like he was very honest, genuine, and interested in helping everyone to succeed. He also knew what he was talking about.

SIDE NOTE: I realize I came down pretty hard on Ami Vora. I also realize that Facebook is a relatively new company and they’re still figuring out who can speak well for them and what they should say, but why send out such a stiff presentation to a bunch of geeks who would rather get into technical details and have a real discussion? Seriously, next chance you get to do a talk like this, prepare something more interesting and send Joel out with a snazzy blazer. Leave the PR packet at home.

Moving on. There was a scaling talk. That’s not my department, though I found what sections I could understand to be fairly interesting. Long story short: Be ready to scale, because adding lots of users quickly can bring you down if you’re not prepared. Also, if you have a million users, you’re going to be spending about $1500 a month on hosting.

Next was the Future of Social Network Advertising, which had the most heated discussion. Unfortunately, it was moderated by Rafe Needleman, who took the podium apparently unaware of the topic of the panel and the names of his panelists… then stiffly read all of that information off of a piece of paper. For the next twenty minutes, he attempted to steer the conversation into exclusively a discussion about Microsoft, their ad platform, and their recent investment in Facebook.

Once he let go of the reins, the discussion got a lot more interesting, with Todd Sawicki from Lookery nearly shouting down the rest of the panel with his opinions on the future of pretty much everything - “All consumer applications will be free and ad supported!” Murtaza Hussein, whose current venture has a silly name and whose last venture is Xuqa.com, which has a silly name and a terrible logo, hunched quietly next to Mr Sawicki, apparently summoning all of his strength to interrupt Todd to tell him he disagreed.

It was at this point that Lee Lorenzen had some very interesting things to say (see beginning of this post), and the discussion settled into relative civility. Dave McClure, “Master of 500 Hats” (who should also have the title “Heckler of Panels”) managed to be the first and only person at the entire event to say “fuck” into a microphone.

It’s worth mentioning that while the advertising discussion was interesting and informative, everyone but Lee Lorenzen seemed to have self-promotional tourette’s; Lookery! AceBucks! CPM’s! Lookery! AceBucks!

Then there was a blogger roundtable, which uber-blogger Robert Scoble attempted to turn into a one-on-one between himself and Dan Farber from ZDNet. Over the course of the discussion, Scoble also made many mentions of having dinner with people from Google, as well as bragging about his 5,000 Facebook friends.

Nick O’Neill, from Allfacebook.com, was a lot funnier than I expected.

Lastly, we had a platforms strategies discussion, which featured developers of successful applications who blatantly contradicted a lot of what the other panels said about building apps - they represented Flixster, iLike, and more of the most complex and fully-featured applications on Facebook.

All told, it was a day well spent: There was a lot of good discussion, and I met some cool people at the event whom I otherwise may not have. At the same time, I still cannot help but think that the overwhelming idea that “We’ve only just begun…” is misleading, and that, like those fancy private summer camps for wannabe-rock-star high school students, nobody was willing to step up and say what has always been true, and what the Facebook platform is not going to change: “Many of you will try. Most of you will fail. Even if you follow our instructions and do everything ‘right,’ that does not ensure success.”

Then again, I’m still here, still trying, still working towards my platform-inspired dreams of building a big, awesome company that makes cool, useful, profitable products.

I may be cynical, but come on, there’s money on the table. What am I gonna do, leave it there for somebody else?

Aaron Nemoyten may or may not take credit for writing this article in a few weeks. Just wait and see.