I've spent a large portion of the last ten years trying to work out what internet companies are up to and what their plan is for the future and this is what I've concluded.

They don't have one.

They're all making it up as they go along in the hope that they'll either stumble on some money or find a buyer.

I should say that I agree that the tone of the Guardian piece could be construed as a conspiracy theory, though presumably the first 3 links represent no more than the facts c. 2008, from which Facebook has retreated somewhat under customer and peer pressure.

BUT isn't it interesting to look back 10 years and ask how we'd have reacted to those stories if we could have seen them ?

This, for example would have read like Ballard (or Dick, or Pohl, or ...):

The whole purpose of Beacon is to allow advertisers to run ads next to these purchase messages. A message about someone’s purchase on Travelocity might run alongside an airline or hotel ad, for example. Mr. Zuckerberg has heralded the new ads as being like a “recommendation from a trusted friend.”

But Facebook users say they do not want to endorse products.

“Just because I use a Web site, doesn’t mean I want to tell my friends about it,” said Annie Kadala, a 23-year old student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Maybe I used that Web site because it was cheaper.”

Ms. Kadala found out about Beacon on Thanksgiving day when her News Feed told her that her sister had purchased the Harry Potter “Scene It?” game.

“I said, ‘Susan, did you buy me this game for Christmas?’” Ms. Kadala recalled. “I don’t want to know what people are getting me for Christmas.”

From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/technology/30face.html?ref=technology)

it revolves around selling ads or things from which they take a cut.

What facebook are doing is not disimilar to the Tesco Clubcard principle

All terrible people, of course - brands, banks, governments, media, supermarkets.

They're all in it. Trying to sell us things. It's terrible. I heard they might be reptiles

Thehy al talk toi eacj othuxs yi know - yess thye doo

I na code non eof usc an c rack

Kevin Spacey has just announced that he's producing a film about the founders of Facebook.

The announcement was a Twitter tweet.

Interesting piece on data mining and networks

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_22/b4133032573293.htm?li...

Good analysis of Facebook's acquisition of FeedFriend at:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc20090810_284380...

FriendFeed's founders and staff of mostly ex-Googlers earned their stripes building Google Talk, Google Maps, Gmail, and other free Web services. When they launched FriendFeed to the public in February 2008, they designed the service to help users organize their online social lives—everything from Twitter updates to pictures posted on Facebook to Netflix rentals—in one place. To help members scour through all this information, the company developed an advanced search engine that pulls in real-time data from many different sites around the Web. It lets users search keywords that only certain friends have mentioned, or only for posts that have been "liked" by a certain number of people on the site.

This search engine may be a big part of what Facebook is after. Currently the social network has a limited search engine, which only retrieves data from certain types of pages within its own site. "They could plug the [FriendFeed] search engine into Facebook and have a huge win," Scoble says. If the site succeeds in building compelling search, more Web users may turn to Facebook for everyday searches, rather than general search engines like Google.

More effective search of current conversations and popular topics could lead to more profits for Facebook, which has taken criticism for focusing more on growth in the number of its users than in generating revenue. "Being able to get a taste of what consumers are doing on 50 different sites can be very powerful," says David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for digital marketing agency 360i, of FriendFeed's search. By contrast, he says Facebook's search tools have not been as effective for marketers.