Why blank will blank in 2009. The blank of 2008. Great time of year - when you can make absurd statements that no one remembers. So, I guess I'll join in on t

Why blank will blank in 2009. The blank of 2008. Great time of year - when you can make absurd statements that no one remembers. So, I guess I'll join in on the fun. 1. Facebook continues to loose money at a rate that makes the government (really any government) look good. They quickly burn through their cash and raise more cash and then raise some more. Their growth is phenomenal, but it becomes apparent that they aren't quite able to monetize. 2. Facebook tries a bold new strategy of invasive advertising. Lots of analysis of all sorts of things that piss off users. 3. Alternative services create an interoperable system that doesn't suck. Users are able to create friend relationships across domains. All of a sudden, social-network lock-in crumbles. I think that last one is the coolest thought. There are things stopping an open network from working: 1. Logins. OpenID is poorly implemented - it should work like email. Put in your email address, get the format of the OpenID url by checking the domain part and then put the username together in the format specified by the site for login. Profit! Most banks already have a two screen authentication (first just username, then just password) so it's not so outrageous to think users won't accept that. 2. Friends. There needs to be a cross-service friend system. This isn't so hard to implement. We already have a unique ID (the OpenID/Email). So, now we can say, bill@microsoft.com is friends with steve@apple.com even if only steve has signed up for the service because we import the bill email address as an ID to the service when we sign-up/sync. Now, that's a SPAM haven. So, why not hash the first part. So, bill becomes xc78901@microsoft.com as the ID and when bill@microsoft.com signs up, we hash it to see the ID and realise that he's already friends with others using the service. Cool! That way, we can take our friend network with us to whatever service and have it sync up easily.