Facebook reached a milestone a few weeks ago when it surpassed Google as the most visited site. The site now claims 400 million active users worldwide. Some think it could reach 1 billion by 2012.
Connectivity on this scale is something never seen before and the implications are not entirely obvious. But as digital natives come of age and take control of businesses and institutions, we're going to see some very interesting things take shape that weren't even conceivable in the past.
As it stands, Facebook is still primarily a place to connect with friends and brands, share content, and play games. But what else could Facebook become?
Thomas Power, Chairman of Ecademy.com, thinks Facebook could become a bank that harnesses the power of peer-to-peer lending (think Zopa on a massive scale), and might wipe out the big banks some day. Or it could be used to attain unprecedented collective buying power (think Groupon on steroids).
Add that to ongoing developments like geolocation and the intention web and you realize we've only begun to tap the potential of social networks.
For that to happen, the dust has to settle and the victors of the social networks have to fully emerge.
As Clay Shirky says, things don't get socially interesting until they're technologically boring. I can't wait.
