Facebook is More Than Just a Website Now

In what was perhaps the largest initial public offering announcement since the time of Google, Facebook finally announced that it was going public, and launched its portfolio on the NASDAQ yesterday.

Almost immediately after the announcement, its shares fluctuated quite dramatically. And cue the Internet noise as commenters from esteemed economists to the average blogger started speculating the demise of the social media giant.

Here’s what I think, though: Facebook has become more than a simple website. It’s more than a mere social network.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team out in Palo Alto have effectively built a social platform. The company has transcended from being a place to keep updated with friends from around the world, to a digital space that is set to connect not just the world, but the disparate network of websites and blogs that together generate what they call the “social graph.”

If anything, the future of Facebook looks bright. It has become a tool that we find indispensable on a daily basis, and in some ways offers a sense of connectivity unparalleled by other (more traditional) means of communication. The furthering of the social idea – by “staking a claim” of social space on other websites, and thus creating a more interconnected web – will serve as a bridge, if anything, to what could be termed a “Web 3.0” of sorts.