And he only got $29,140 if he was using ThemeForest exclusively. If he was selling themes elsewhere, he only got to keep $11,750 of that $47,000. ThemeForest takes an enormous cut.
Sales and lead generation is huge, I buy quite a few themes from ThemeForest, you seriously going to hunt around the net to 100 different sites where each author has 10 themes. Marketing has a cost and keeping an audience is very valuable
I've purchased a few themes as well, however every time I've gone to do it I usually contact the author via email first and offer to buy the theme directly from him for 30-40% off. I save money, they get more money, we all win.
Ethically borderline IMHO if you used the marketplace to find the theme first. If you found the author first, and saw they offered themes in a certain market after, it would be more acceptable to contact the author directly. You're essentially cutting out the marketplace from the transaction which damages their business model.
If the deal goes through, it may require Facebook to take a different approach with their CDN strategy. They will probably either begin to roll their own (given their size and budgets), or move to a blended environment where they utilize multiple CDNs based on region and traffic levels.
For example, Apple historically has used Akamai for their content delivery, but as of around ~2009, they began to use Limelight in conjunction with Akamai. Just today with the iOS 5/OS X updates, I noticed at home in Los Angeles that the delivery from Limelight was terrible. I tried it again about an hour after release, and I was then being sent to Level3.
