As first reported by eGamingReview, the popular social networking site Facebook could soon be entering the real money online gaming arena in the United Kingdom. EGR explained in an article posted on Wednesday, “The launch time frame is unclear, however Facebook is known to have been heavily promoting its virtual credits to U.K. operators in the last few months as well as investigating ways in which this can eventually be transformed into a real money model.”

Facebook is a behemoth any way you slice it. It was founded seven years ago and has taken off since. According to the site, it has 800 million active users around the world. About half of Facebook’s users log in on any given day and the average person has about 130 friends. Members of the social networking site upload more than 250 million photos every day and 75% of its users are located outside of the United States.

There are currently over seven million apps integrated into Facebook, including the popular Zynga Poker, which features the same marketing team that popularized PokerTableRatings. Facebook’s users are also increasingly mobile-oriented, as more than 350 million users access the site from a mobile device.

According to EGR, Facebook “is known to have sketched out a plan to offer an initial eight licenses to eight individual operators, two from each of the four verticals, with the social network being used as a platform for the firms to integrate their apps.” The subscription-based news site added that 888 could be one of the first firms to receive a license; 888 already has a Facebook presence through Bingo Island.

As to when real money games in the United Kingdom could begin, EGR ventured, “Facebook could launch real-money play in the U.K. as soon as the first quarter of next year, however EGR understands the finer details of how this would work have yet to be discussed. This includes how revenues would be split between the platform and operators, how the age and identity verification process would work, which payment solutions Facebook would approve for real money play, and the speed in which launch phase operators, that do currently not have apps on Facebook, could create working real money applications on the platform.”

According to EGR, Zynga Poker has more than 30 million users. What its future would be if Facebook were to promote an online gambling product aggressively remains to be seen. According to PokerNews, Zynga said earlier this month that it has “no interest in going after the real money space.” Meanwhile, 888 told PokerNews that the company would release a statement about its discussions with Facebook “within the next 48 hours.”

Over on TwoPlusTwo, posters debated the significance of Facebook potentially entering the U.K. for-money gaming market. One member of that poker forum wrote, “If Facebook is just going to pick up a skin and have it as a small side offering, then this is close to no news. If they are contracting out to develop their own site, which they plan on heavily advertising and pushing, then this is probably the biggest news in online poker in years. Unfortunately, I expect this is vastly more likely to be the former rather than the latter.”

Another TwoPlusTwo poster pointed out strong social ties that may keep existing Facebook app operators afloat: “[Zynga] still has millions of drooling Farmville players. And there will be a large contingent of Zynga Poker players who enjoy the play money games and will not want to switch. Many of these players won’t want to give up the social ties they made on Zynga.”

Zynga’s brands include Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CastleVille, Mafia Wars, and Pioneer Trail.

Plenty of well-known companies already operate online poker rooms. WSOP.com, for example, accepts real money wagers and makes its home on the same network as 888. Meanwhile, Yahoooffers a real money gaming site in the United Kingdom on the Boss Media Network.

We’ll keep you posted on the latest poker news right here on PocketFives.