Last night Josh Elman posted on the Facebook blog about the rise in applications that are embedding videos provided by the television networks. Watercooler’s TVLoop applications use Hulu to display videos of show episodes and Mesmo TV is displaying the shows as well. Both have had mixed results and Mesmo TV has dropped from over 681,000 monthly active users to around 472,000 as displayed in the chart below.

What’s interesting is Facebook’s current strategy to leave distribution deals to their developers. While the existing television videos on applications are done through Hulu for the most part, the one company which doesn’t appear to be finalizing any media distribution deals recently is Facebook. The other social networks have been busy signing deals.

Just yesterday Meebo announced a deal with Universal Music Group. Bebo has also been busy signing distribution deals as well as creating their own shows. imeem got Britney’s new album debut. Facebook has been rumored to be in conversation with music companies but nothing has materialized yet. While I’ve suggested that social networks are the next television, Facebook has yet to fully embrace the media.

MySpace on the other hand has rolled out MySpace Music. While Facebook may not have dropped the idea of media distribution, does it make sense to rely totally on other applications for forming distribution deals? With such substantial leverage, you’d imagine that Facebook would be working on something bigger. Do you think it’s better left to developers to forge deals or should Facebook do something bigger?