I mostly suspect you're right. But at the same time I get the sense that nobody is completely sure what all this social identity is going to be good for. Like

I mostly suspect you're right. But at the same time I get the sense that nobody is completely sure what all this social identity is going to be good for. Like the early days of the web, everybody can see that it will be very important going forward, but the business models it will support aren't fully clear yet. So it's a mad land grab at the moment in the hope it will monetize or be commercially leveragable somehow down the road. For example, a Facebook valuation of $100B? More than $100 per active user? Come on. No matter how well you can target them, how many banner ads are these people going to click?