Facebook, a monopoly

I'm sure Facebook would claim it's not a monopoly – strictly speaking it isn't – but it clearly wants to be and, if there are whole sections of society who feel obliged to sign up in order to be able to communicate with one another, then its dreams are coming true. Next there'll be electric sheep. Facebook isn't aspiring to be Cable & Wireless or AT&T, major players within a medium; it wants to be the whole telephone network.

In some ways, this works well for everyone. It's more convenient if we're all joined up by the same social network, just as Google is more useful as a search engine because almost everyone uses it. It would be different if, like phone providers, different social media sites communicated with one another – if you could send someone a message from your Facebook account that popped up on their LinkedIn or Netlog page (I looked up those names on Yahoo). But you can't and, while it's providing its services for free, there's no pressure on Facebook to rein in its monopolistic urge.

On a related note, if you've been on Facebook recently, you'll undoubtedly have noticed the outpouring of anger over the new design update – yes, the one that follows each redesign with almost reassuring, routine inevitability. Indeed, the whole flurry of attention on the new design has been greatly intensified because Facebook now has a competitor: Google+, which (bless its heart) has not yet reached the number of users generally considered ideal for a social network. Even so, Facebook's end will come someday. So it goes.

(Image: "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote address during the Facebook f8 conference on September 22, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the conference introducing a Timeline feature to the popular social network." Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)