At his company’s annual "F8" conference, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the audience of developers, media and analysts that his company hasn’t "done enough to reward Facebook’s good citizens...and we haven’t punished those that have abused the Facebook ecosystem."

He was talking about the 30,000 applications that have been created by third parties to run on the popular social networking site. These applications permit people to play games with other members, listen to music, schedule events and much more -- all within Facebook. They are a key to the service’s success because they greatly leverage what Facebook members can do within the service.

The 24-year-old Harvard dropout who started Facebook when still at college made it clear that the company would more carefully police how the applications functioned to be sure they don’t violate users’ privacy, include security holes or perform in ways that are annoying or obnoxious.

In addition to banning bad applications, the company plans to reward what it considers to be "great" applications by giving them more exposure on the service, the Associated Press reports.  Zuckerberg admitted that the company has made mistakes and, according to Reuters, said that the company shut down 1,000 applications in the past year due to privacy violations.

If Facebook is able to make good on this commitment, it means that parents can count on a more stable, secure and private site for their kids and themselves. Facebook is accessible to anyone over 13 and is quite popular among high school and college students.