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Lots of sites adds "?ref=###" in their URL, facebook/imdb etc. Now I checked this question and it appears that the reason is to keep track of what "referred" the users to that page. But I don't understand, what's the point of doing that? Is it for analytical or functional purposes?
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The address of the webpage where a person clicked a link that sent them to your page. The referrer is the webpage that sends visitors to your site using a link. In other words, it's the webpage that a person was on right before they landed on your page.
URL parameter is a way to pass information about a click through its URL. You can insert URL parameters into your URLs so that your URLs track information about a click. URL parameters are made of a key and a value separated by an equals sign (=) and joined by an ampersand (&).
As David said in the comment, it could be for any purpose they'd like.
In case of Facebook, it is mostly used for statistical tracking. It helps developers to understand where their traffic is coming from so that they can better optimize their Facebook integration. This data can also be seen in the App's insight under Referrals. According to one of the comments in the question that you've linked, a functional use of ref=ts parameter it to disable the mobile redirect, so some Facebook app developers use it intentionally to serve mobile users the desktop version of the site.
You can find more info at: Fbdev Ref Wiki and Referral Tracking documentation.
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