If they are really smart they'll make it even easier for niche communities to use their social graph, or to create custom data records within it. For a lot of s

If they are really smart they'll make it even easier for niche communities to use their social graph, or to create custom data records within it. For a lot of site owners it makes sense to outsource account and user info management to someone else. FB has had trouble being reliable enough for that kind of service in the past, but it's not like they don't have the talent and money to do this. If you look at the Like button, and their other endeavors, I don't think Facebook's ambitions are limited to just getting visits and clicks. They want to become a utility as indispensable as HTTP. And Facebook are really smart. Keep in mind that if there is a drop, they've probably known about it for months and months, and we're just finding out it about now indirectly. That said, I hope they don't succeed and a distributed system does succeed.