Psst, here's how I think Facebook is going to unravel itself: just like Microsoft not seeing the forrest for the trees, getting blind sided by the Internet and

Psst, here's how I think Facebook is going to unravel itself: just like Microsoft not seeing the forrest for the trees, getting blind sided by the Internet and Google, Facebook sows the seeds of its own decline by pushing the social graph everywhere. Facebook has carved out a nice hub for itself, being the most visited site other than Google, but what all these startup visionaries may be failing at is vastly underestimating the usefulness of an open social graph. If Facebook suddenly finds its social graph baby is appropriated by an ad hoc open network that dwarfs its users, then Facebook loses control of the graph. How might this happen? Browsers sure have changed a lot in just the past 2 years. Local storage is here today already, but almost no sites are doing anything with it. Google Gears had so much potential, but was too ahead of its time to become a trend. What if your browser stored your entire social graph locally, and you could configure your own privacy settings to only share what you want with sites you visit? That eliminates Facebook from being the master hub of the social graph—they are just another federated end point. As Facebook becomes "spammy" more users will want to block Facebook, so they might be convinced to use a local social graph in the same way hundreds of thousands are using AdBlock and FlashBlock. We already know Facebook will kill links to GreaseMonkey scripts that do this. Alot of mashups and wild Javascript ideas will have to be seen over the next 8 months or so, but I definitely think the Facebook "diaspora" movement will take off once it's dead easy for end-users to run their own social graph programs locally from their own browser. Just like a desktop app. Perhaps even that might be asking too much of end users, the average of whom cannot recognize the difference between their browser and the Internet. Hopefully Apple will start baking new identity features into the iPad, since you know they will nail it as far as being simple enough for everyone to use. The Techrunch rumor mill does keep whispering about Apple putting Facebook Connect into iTunes, but it seems more likely that Apple would take them on. Facebook will wish they had their own browser to push back with. It's probably going to be a great tragedy that Apple is so unstoppable now that they can just roll over any other tech company at-will.