The open web is a network of information while facebook is a network of people I disagree. Facebook is nothing more than bundle of services that happen to be c

The open web is a network of information while facebook is a network of people I disagree. Facebook is nothing more than bundle of services that happen to be conveniently integrated and laced together by the friends graph. Facebook will shatter like all previous monoliths have once we've figured out how to distribute said graph in a sensible way. To clarify I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere before (which is mostly in line with the article): I consider facebook a temporary stepstone in internet evolution. The early commercial internet was dominated by closed ecosystems called AOL and compuserve. A bit later we had portals like lycos and yahoo. Today it's google and facebook. The pattern seems obvious, the systems become more open and distributed at each step. But wait, Facebook looks more like a step back, closer to AOL rather than the other direction, you say? I'd argue that this is also how internet evolution works; one-step-back, two-steps-forward. New concepts seem to first emerge in the form of walled gardens. The first person to integrate and evolve a new concept (such as the friends graph, or twitter) will usually do so inside a closed test tube, simply because that's the most natural way to go (cf. prototyping). Then, when the concepts mature to a point of massive popularity the test tube will inevitably begin to crackle and smaller, "do-one-thing-and-do-it-well" style services start to form in the puddles around the monolith. If you want to see the future internet then you should look less at facebook and more at the puddle surrounding it.