There were the obvious checks for CAPTCHAs when too much activity was detected, but other subtleties as well. If you looked at too many people's profiles, emails wouldn't be displayed as text, but as images. A person would be unlikely to notice as the pages looked identical, but dynamic changes like that make it harder to scrape some things. Introducing even rudimentary OCR requirements is enough to turn away a lot of programmers.
I'm not saying it's not possible to pull off. But Facebook has set it up so any money you might make this way will likely not be worth the development time required.
To be perfectly honest, I've kind of fallen out of love with web development in the last year and have taken more of an interest in algorithmic trading. I appreciate the interest, though. :)
Many people talk about caring about their security in an almost idealistic view; few actually care in application.