Which brings us back to the question: Have we reached peak Facebook? And no, we haven’t. Even if Facebook never adds another user, it will keep growing: It has become a fundamental substrate, a difficult-to-avoid component of any site or app that requires users to register—making it essential to nearly every major web innovation now and in the future. There’s a related question: Is Facebook ever going to be cool again? That’s like asking “Is the phone company cool?” The interface may not be exciting anymore, but the network is very, very cool, in the disruptively awesome way that enormous things are: volcanoes, aircraft carriers, the New Deal.

Instagram succeeded for many good reasons, including its design, its viral qualities, its simplicity, and the fact that its engineers focused so obsessively on making sure that it works all the time. Part of its success, no doubt, is the fact that it was just in the right place, at the right time, with the right, crowd-pleasing mix of features.

‘Once granted, all of these services are issued a token that gives unlimited access to your complete Gmail history. And that's where the danger lies.’

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

On what Farmville is (not a game) and what it means (nothing good).

Authored by Smarr (Plaxo), Canter, Scoble, and Arrington. Brief but a good summary of recent concerns. Comments interesting, but post needs a follow-up soon, and we can probably expect a lot of activity on this blog after DataSharingSummit.

Facebook as a foundation.

All about "The Platform," ambition, and what is sure to be a huge IPO. A success story, and I'm impressed. Go Facebook!