However, unless hell freezes over there’s no chance that people are going to leave Facebook with no competition in sight. Go back to MySpace? Friendster? Hell no… not when there are the Facebook Ad Network and the ominous “Like” button for Fan pages.

Slowly but surely things will even themselves out. Nothing is ever built to last these days – remember that. The matter of the fact is that when shareholders are concerned it is a sinking ship – the question is how much profit can be extracted before it sinks.

Take Microsoft for example. Did exactly the same thing with Windows and PC’s by locking customers in during their monopoly – but now it has major competition from Google and Apple.

Microsoft won’t last until they do something amazing. The mobile market is about to be crushed by Google, of which Apple is currently king.

Facebook will also die – it’s just a question of when does it become painful enough that people leave? Clearly not at this moment.

I think facebook send its users message if they want to share data with any new tie ups which facebook do and implement and not force automatic share on its users

I have signed up for the odd event that somebody wants to contact me and can’t find my site (which is the first result on google anyway). But neither this network, nor any of the 2 others I am a member of actually have an impact on what I do or who I talk to. And neither does Twitter, for that matter.

Some people need fake relationships (and fake farm jobs) it appears, which is kinda sad, but then again it just replaces or combines with the time watching garbage in TV or surfing ebay, so I’m not worried about productivity any more than before. Facebook is a nonessential diversion.

Privacy really is up to any one of us to determine ourselves. Nobody forces us to volunteer the (valid)information or join these networks. If we do, we decide the terms of our participation (like putting “Darfboggling” for a hobby). It’s really just for funsies.

Here’s what I don’t get, and this ain’t no rhetorical question; I’m seriously asking: what’s in it for Facebook? Please do answer anyway you like, links or otherwise. I’m dying to wrap my noodle around this one.

I thought my data was “save” when deciding in the profile settings that only my friends could see them, but I obviously need to make further arrangements to protect my privacy, according to the new plans.

Greetings, Stefan

* Control the visibility: Within your Privacy Settings under the Account menu, you have a section called “Friends, Tags and Connections.” Adjusting the drop-down menus beside each field let you determine who can see those parts of your profile. These visibility settings are a direct response to your requests to be able to hide more information on your profile. Specifically, the most requested feature a few weeks ago was to enable you to hide your friend list on your profile from your friends. As part of today’s changes, you can do that.

Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you’re connected to. If you don’t want to show up on those Pages, simply disconnect from them by clicking the “Unlike” link in the bottom left column of the Page. You always decide what connections to make.