It’s another facebook article when I've just finished one, but the hype and hullabaloo around facebook won't let me ignore it. My views may seem absurd, exaggerated and anti-social but in my defence I have my black hat on while writing this.

The current trend of adapting to the new facebook api's before the next site in your browser window, reminds me of the story of the pied piper of Hamlin. The new pied piper from Palo Alto plays his annual social tune to which all of us joyously sway and dance to, not really knowing what’s the final destination. We are busy enjoying the journey. We love new apis, new scripts, having our empty white-spaces on empty white pages filled with smiling thumbnails branded by the famous blue 'f'. In no time we would have our sites ready to be showcased on facebook’s ideal api adoption examples list.



My black hat whispers to me "what is all this leading to?” Isn't facebook making us dance to its own growth? It is in the process of building infinite scaffolds across the internet. Soon the scaffolds will turn into solid rigid supports making it omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

With all the connect scripts and widgets, its like having small baby ships (the facebook scripts) on our websites each communicating with the mother ship (facebook.com) all the while without we knowing.
Remember the movie independence day ?

Seems creepy when I think what the mother ship did in the movie!!!

Facebook id is now fast achieving what open id couldn't. Many sites do not have a site login and rely on facebook id for logging in. They violate the "do not put all your eggs in one basket" rule. While we do get a share of our average 10-15% traffic from facebook we repay it with nearly 2x returns. Looking back we are all facebook's brand ambassadors. If there was a CPM on the facebook button, that would add up to a hell lotta money.

Facebook is tipped to be the Goliath of the social world. Not too long before there was a Goliath named Microsoft. Do all Goliaths want to rule the worlds they created and nurtured?

A few days ago like all other facebook pages you could comment on facebook's facebook page (reminds me of recursive acronyms like GNU and wiki.com/wiki) viz http://www.facebook.com/facebook. Come f8, users can no longer post on facebook's facebook page, they can only comment on what facebook has written.The last user written comment seen was on Monday 26th April ‘10. A current snapshot of the page show there are no user posts, all being purged by facebook.

Doesn't facebook believe in a fair social world? Food for thought? Unless you are done eating the social pies.