Thank you, Facebook

It's become a ritual that whenever Facebook changes anything, people throw up their arms and quickly update their status that they'll stop using the site. I laugh at the inherent irony of such posts.

Lately, it's been a lot of anti-privacy stuff, and quite predictable impulsive responses result. This makes me laugh, too, because facebook wouldn't be able to share one, single thing about you if you didn't type it in. Now, if FB were a fee-based site, we could complain and ask for changes, but with FB, we are all getting waaaay more than we pay for. (On this topic, watch Danah Boyd talk about it back in March at SXSW, or better still, read her full text. It's a great speech.)

I'm on the record for being a big facebook lover. I love seeing what friends are up to--especially those of you I don't see regularly. I like that FB has effectively disposed of the FW: FW: FW: chain emails. It has largely become the "home page" for my blog reading. I turn to FB when I want a reference or when seeking travel advice. Odds are, you're reading this after linking through my facebook post. 

So, recently, facebook announced something called the Open Graph. I'm no computer programmer, but it seems that FB is opening up our posts for commercial purposes. I'm cool with this. I'm much more comfortable with FB doing this than Google. Mashable lists 5 ways that this will affect e-commerce. I'm cool with all five of those ways. Seems like FB wants to compete with Google and Amazon, and competition is always good for us normal people. And, if all this results in is more advertising aimed at me for the stuff that I want, so be it. I hate shopping. If FB can make shopping easier for me, then I'm all in.