People express a great deal of angst over Facebook's constant tinkering with the appearance and functionality of the service. And Facebook has startlingly more users than any given electrical system, or phone system, or water or sewer system. That body of users is even international.
Facebook is clearly seeking to be THE INTERNET. It wants to be where you search for a business. It wants to replace email. It wants to take over chat. Facebook wants to insinuate itself into human society and be important and relevant and necessary. To foster the communication that drives movements and change and causes...and ends them.
What if they succeed? What if people start to feel entitled? What if it causes civil unrest when they switch us to Timeline? Or looting when the server goes down? What if Facebook imposes a big fee messaging once the Postal Service is defunct and email has been forgotten?
So, maybe there is a point at which Facebook winds up regulated like utilities. Maybe they'd have to go before a Board or Commission and beg to be allowed to change the official color to green. Or to allow people under 13 to use it.
Or, maybe it's more than that. Because Facebook allows people of many nations to mingle and share subversive ideas, and blend cultures, and corrupt each other governments start to get a little jittery. Perhaps the U.N. Secret Police so feared by Texas judges show up in Mark Zuckerberg's office and say, "Mr. Zuckerberg, we need to talk. Here's how it's going to be...."
Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Department of Homeland Security has already demanded a setting that makes it everybody's Friend - a member of everyone's innermost circle. Or maybe Mark is the secret head of DHS and Facebook runs on government servers.
We might need Neo soon.