This article is crap. It is poorly argued, poorly written and it is full of typos.

It is a series of empty statements:

1. Growth: Yes, it will plateau. So what? The question is revenues, not users.

2. Not for Sale: Every company maintains that illusion with their public persona. An IPO is hugely distracting for everyone involved. You don't burn that bridge until you need to cross it.

3. Respect Users: Why, exactly, does that lead to failure? Microsoft users don't expect respect. Apple users crave flagellation from the great Steve. Facebook doesn't even pretend to "not be evil".

4. Lawsuit: Name a company with >250 people that doesn't have a lawsuit. Money attracts lawyers.

5. Useless: That's what much of the web IS. For much of the world it is a giant distraction.

I use YC to keep stuff like this from wasting my time!

Well, duh. Facebook is just one website, therefore it's not the future of the web.

But, the concept of newsfeed of highly personalized notifications, based on established relationships with other entities -- this might be around for a long while. Once liberated from an individual website it should suck a lot less.

Has anybody beta tested FriendFeed? It looks like the kind of news feed neilk describes.

Eww.. That's a horrible future for the web.

And why exactly?

The fact that they're valued as much as GE and yet still can't make any money w/o investors speaks volumes.

You mean GM I think. GE is worth 20 times as much.

Its time for facebook scrapers - distributed, with human-ish delays between click. Grabs names, pictures, emails (with OCR). Welcome to the downloadable social!

I don't see how Facebook growing quickly can be a bad thing. Would it be better to grow at a slower rate?

I'd rather slow sustainable growth, than hype filled growth. Facebooks growth is hot air... which at some point will all come pouring out.