AT&T has a new developer challenge for facebook in which it will pay $5,000 to the best integration of their own API (had no idea that existed) and Facebook’s platform. The contest requires you to integrate at least one core facebook function (poking, messaging, photos, etc.) with a mobile system.

I can see a number of potential ideas sprouting from this if it gets enough attention. Right now $5k isn’t a major incentive, but if they give it enough promotion, then it could draw some attention. It looks to me like a cheap way for a big company to figure out some ideas that they otherwise would have had to pay many times more to develop internally.