Facebook or Utilitybook?

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Facebook needs to make a decision soon; it has to decide what social utilities it will not pursue.  It has chat. It has a Twitter app and now it has Facebook Places, a Gowalla, Foursquare-like feature.  As cool new mobile apps with ballast emerge over the next few years, Facebook will develop or mirror them too. 

I’m on record as saying Facebook may become the world’s first trillion dollar company, but it won’t if users get tired of it.  Partners can’t live together 24-hours a day. You can’t read the same author over and over. Or watch only Pirate of the Caribbean movies.  We need different forms of stimulus. Diversity.  Facebook must do what they do well and allow the Web and other entrepreneurs to lead in other utility areas. It’s what makes the Web fun.  The hunt, the exploration, the surprise and the new. If Facebook becomes the premier app for everything on the Web, then the Web will become boring and they certainly don’t want that.  I think Google is beginning to learn this truism.

Facebook needs to understand its mission. If Google’s mission is “the world’s information in one click,” then Facebook’s is “the world’s people in one click.” It should build out that way.  Continuing on its current path, Facebook will become the world’s utility and humans will become saturated.  After all it’s called Facebook, not Utilitybook. Peace!