DISQUS

...we just don't know whether anyone will make any money off of it.

All this hype over building apps and jamming ad boxes in it - we have no insight yet as to whether this is making or will make any money.

I wrote about this yesterday as well. Social networks rely on having some kind of connection between users. For general purpose social networks, such as FB/MySpace/Twitter, the utility of them is zero without it. If you add random people, that's all your social network is... just a bunch of meaningless connections.

In terms of Facebook usage - no, nothing will change. It used to be when Facebook was college-only, there would be a spike at the beginning of the year when the incoming freshmen would first be able to use it.

In terms of applications, however, we'll hopefully see a rise of applications that have a real social utility, and there the advantage of the Facebook platform will be proven. So, while "Top Friends" may not get a boost in traffic, note-sharing and course-related applications will **hopefully** see an incredible amount of usage, especially after Facebook itself announced it would de-activate it's own Courses module in favor of third-party applications. If applications that could really harness the power of social networking and provide an actual advantage to its users prove successful, that will validate social networking as a whole. Otherwise, we'll see...