And I firmly believe that the platform, along with Myspace and other such sites, will be long heralded as innovators and milestones in the development of communications networks, as you suggest.

Even when it is done, it will still be seen as important for the social networking world. I guess your IRC, Sega comment is true, but I think with those things, the storied history is what’s important rather than what they have become.

Facebook is struggling with this movement, because in essence it makes use of new, light-weight and easy to use sites and technology to free users from the boundaries of any single network. Their data, such as contacts, profile information, pictures, and so on, can be exported and moved around the web using tools which already exist within the network.

The developers recently made the plunge to open their platform up considerably, but they’re still fighting it by blocking movement of information between itself and its greatest competitors, namely Myspace and FriendConnect. Great article here. You’ve already had your data freed up and mobilized by the facebook team, along with everyone else, you’re just not taking advantage of it, yet. One day users will catch on to another platform you just have to have, and that will be Facebook’s eventual replacement.

So it might be more compelling to theorize that facebook will be phased out in favour of a new generation of networking, and evolve into something else in the way that Netscape and even SEGA have changed over the years from industry forerunners to small, if storied, developers. Let’s not forget that IRC and BBS once represented the cutting edge of networking technology. They may still be used nowadays, but the medium has continued to transform.

I think the same will hold true for Facebook. It would, everyone uses it and the publishers seem to have a handle on it’s scope. I have 250 friends on Facebook, most of whom I would hardly remember if not for the site. I doubt I’d look them up on a new social networking site or whatever the next evolution of social networking is.

The interesting thing to me about the article is the future of technology in the workplace. As our generation become more present within the business world, I wonder which of our “bad” habits will come with us. I know that some corporations already use Office Messenger and Blackberries. From what I’ve seen they are still used in a business manner with memos using full sentences, headings and everything. How long is it until internet shorthand becomes commonplace among executives? That future is coming and along with it the complete acceptance of the malleability of the English language.