When Facebook was created six years ago in a Harvard dormitory, no one imagined that it would soon become the world’s most popular social network, toppling earlier giants like MySpace and Friendster. No one imagined that it would rise to a level to challenge even Google. in terms of information held.  It’s actually funny – Google trying to fight with Facebook over the amount of personal information it has. Coming back to the point, Facebook now has over 500 million users and is still growing. Already, a quarter of the world’s Internet population is on Facebook. What more does this giant social networking site want? What does it have in store for the future?

At the recently held developer’s conference, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and creator of Facebook, announced his plans of creating a new, open world with Facebook. Ever since the introduction of the Facebook Connect API, thousands of sites all over the Internet have come up with their own Facebook Like buttons. Facebook thinks this will help people decide how to browse the Internet. The truth is that Facebook wants to learn how people wants to browse the Internet. Facebook is just a vacuum for information. It is constantly looking for more information so that it can create better ads and sell them back to the people themselves. It is always a win-win situation for Facebook.

If the situation continues to go like this, then it is a very beneficial future for Facebook, but a scary one for the world at large, where nothing is personal anymore.  Facebook will become a sort of an overlord for the whole world. sucking up their private information and using it against them! Facebook is rumored to raise a revenue of  over $1 billion in 2010. If this figure is anything to go by, then in the future, Facebook will simply explode, beating Google and Microsoft at their own game, and becoming the most powerful Internet company in the world.

Right now Facebook is sitting in a pretty powerful position. Everyone uses Facebook in their own way, either to socialize or to use it as a marketing technique. People use it to catch up with their friends and are proud to upload their photographs on Facebook, showing their achievements. In the future, Facebook may stop hiding behind the veil it has created for itself, and use such photographs openly to create targeted ads.

To cut the long story short, Facebook is the company which everyone should be scared of in the coming days. Right now, it may not be earning any significant revenue, but it is the richest source of information in the world and is capable of using that information to satisfy its own needs. Run by a man who is known to be selfish at times, Facebook is heading towards a strong future that will make it even more powerful and unstoppable. For now, Facebook is just another popular website. But in the coming days, it may become the site which may decide how people use the Internet!