Is Facebook the new Internet and how soon before Microsoft tries to buy it?

Is Facebook the new Internet and how soon before Microsoft tries to buy it?
blogmaverick.com

The ability to check your friends status? Ok, pretty cool. Connect with old HS and college friends? Ok, that's sort of cool too. But more and more I find myself withdrawing from actually participating in the micro of the site, and using it more as a macro tool for my own identity. I don't have a facebook now because I actually use it, or gain much from it, rather I simply have it because, well, everyone else does. And it comes up on Google when people search my name.

In other words it's a part of my general online identity, along with my personal website, twitter, posterous, etc. I'm not saying I use these tools like a lot of others might, but I'm also trying to drive home the point that it's just another of many identity tools that I have at my disposal.

Now I'm not sure about Facebook taking over my complete identity, as in being my de facto online presence, because I have huge issues with the way facebook is going about retaining its control over the data generated from their users.

I think if facebook wants to stay relevant they'll have to keep entering new domains on the web, and certainly they have plans for location-based services, and other stuff down the road.

For the time being now though, the entertainment of watching status updates on my phone, or browsing peoples wall streams just doesn't seem economic to me in terms of building something people would use on the order of a Google search engine. Sure some people may be spending a lot of time on there, but to me it looks more like an illusory fixation with comparing oneself to others than something that I can get real use out of.

(With my Mac I run a business and organize my entire personal and professional life, with Google all of the worlds information is literally at my finger tips, with Facebook I just found out that Stacey's new dog took a leak on the carpet and that Steve thinks avatar was a great movie; there's a big difference there.)

Alternatively, Facebook could be out of fashion in 2 years. Don't forget that we work in a fashion industry. It wouldn't even be worth its last post-money valuation.

So the expected value of Facebook lies somewhere in between and that expected value is radically short of management's dreams. They don't need cash and they seem to be executing well. This is not a recipe for strategic acquisition.

I think Facebook will remain private and independent for as long as it can. If they are on a path to success and need more cash, they'll IPO (remember those?). If they keep their user base, but can't scale their monetization, they'll be bought by somebody who can (a search engine). The worst case isn't pretty because they don't have the backstop that has been supporting MySpace through its troubles (music).

Facebook is attempting to expand in scope because they're ambitious, but at the end of the day, they're just a social networking site. As a matter of fact, they're really just a template for people who don't want to go to the trouble of designing their own webpage. Which is a great service, but that's all it is. Oh, and it's easy to link to other people's web pages.

Facebook and social networking are exciting today the same way EBay was in 2000: the medium is the message. You went to EBay because it was novel and fun. Soon enough, Facebook will have reached it's potential the way EBay has.

I think, at the very least, almost every Gmail and Android user would disagree. Not to mention users of search, docs, voice etc. etc.