Leal: Facebook becoming interaction standard

In Facebook's vision, gone are the days of fragmented messaging,bits and pieces of unconnected electronic mail in your Facebookaccount, phone, instant messaging conversations and e-mailaccounts. All of these will be accessible through your Facebook andwill be displayed as continuous streams of conversations instead ofbroken-up messages, similar to an IM chat or your iPhone.

Period of transition for the Internet

In a period of transition for the Internet, from the passive rawmaterial of simple web pages in Web 1.0, Web 2.0 brings us mobileapplications, television software and increasingly a means ofcommunication for the products of our everyday lives. Facebook hasfound its own niche amidst so much disruptive innovation, it'sbecome not only a personal virtual identity and web-basedreplication of our social interactions, but it's becoming theplatform for all interaction on the Web.

While this platform lets you see what your friends are doing andview their photos, the addition of universal messaging will make iteven more pivotal in contacting anyone you know. Additionally,Facebook's recent partnership with Skype will help bring thiscommunication full circle with VOIP calls and video chats.

But Facebook's Social Graph stretches its reach beyond yourfriends and their pictures; it makes it pivotal in tailoring allyour search engine results and advertisements to you individually,and its conduciveness for businesses and public figures help tocreate a more effective social presence and interact (and sell)more efficiently with customers and constituents. This willincreasingly aid the monetization of the web and drive futuregrowth.

The relationship between these two technology companies is alsosort of kaleidoscopic; Microsoft was able to revolutionize the waywe interact with the hardware of personal computers by creating aninnovative operating system, while today, on the other hand,Facebook is revolutionizing the way we interact with the Internetby creating a social operating system for the entire Webitself.