A lot of discussion about Facebook lately. Robert Scoble has written a number of posts about Facebook lately but the first thing I really noticed as I tried to catch up after being off the Internet (for the most part) for two weeks was his comment about how two-way Facebook is. These are similar to some observations to some I made last September when Facebook first introduced their news feed. That news feed really connects people in a way that is very different from traditional blogging. Different is not always better or worse of course. But this feature does make Facebook more "sticky" that a lot of social computing sites. It is why I really like Facebook.

And then there is this talk about Microsoft being in the market to buy Facebook. Joe Wilcox at Microsoft Watch writes about why Facebook is attractive to Microsoft and how, in his opinion, Microsoft could screw things up. Frankly I think there is a big difference between "could" and "would." I think that in fact moving some or all of the underlying technology to Microsoft platform could be a big improvement. And I don't see Microsoft making some of the errors Joe talks about as being likely. Of course I could be wrong but I would not be holding on to my stock if I didn't believe in Microsoft technology now would I?

Don Dodge wrote recently about the problems making money at Facebook and MySpace. I highly doubt that Microsoft would buy Facebook if they can't first figure out how to make money in the process. Is someone working on that? I have no idea but clearly solving the monetization problem is going to be key to making any purchase, and not just by Microsoft, work out.

I have no idea if Microsoft or anyone else would/should/might buy Facebook. Frankly if I were the people behind Facebook I would only sell if I couldn't figure out how to really make profits from the company. If I could solve that problem it would make more sense to my way of thinking to remain independent as long as possible. But that's just the kind of guy I am.