If you take a step back and look at what Facebook is trying to do, it makes sense. They have never been about the advertisers or the users or the developers exc

If you take a step back and look at what Facebook is trying to do, it makes sense. They have never been about the advertisers or the users or the developers exclusively: their mission is to attain and represent the social graph which exists in the real world, on their servers. This is why they have both Facebook applications as well as Facebook Connect. Whereas apps brings people in to the site and earns ad revenue, Connect allows users to interact with websites in a socially relevant way without Facebook participating in ad revenue. If framed from an advertising perspective, it would seem that they are hurting themselves by competing with themselves. From a developer point of view, their API can give useful information but does not go far enough. From a user point of view, they want people to feel safe interacting with friends but they also want them to expose more of themselves. To me, none of these facts make sense until you frame it as measures to make the social graph more pervasive. And it's that pervasiveness, IMO, that will guarantee Facebook's success, because it's too attractive to advertisers, developers, and users for any to truly abandon it. P.S. Facebook's definitely not in a bad position financially. I'm pretty sure the terms of my NDA (I was an intern there this summer) preclude me from discussing it further, but its finances have been stable for quite some time now. P.P.S. Article is bullshit, just restrict posts you want to be intimate, that's the idea of Per-Object Privacy. It can improve, to be sure, but that's not the point.