Facebook Web Hosting Service
When people talk about owning your data, your social graph… becoming your own data silo on your own domain using your own hosting provider and having full control of everything without corporate interference and dependence… I am all for it. The DIY Federated Open Social Media and Messaging Sphere. I’ll join and march and evangelize and tinker tinker tinker.
But in order to have a presence on the vast Interwebs, we need to rely on some corporate power. Our ISP. and most likely, a Web Hosting Service too. Sure, you can host your stuff directly from your home/office using just your ISP (if they allow it). But typically, you will have an account with one of many Web Hosting companies. I’ve used many over the years but have stuck with Drreamhost for my little projects and tinkerings. We pay for this. For our web space, email, databases, shell accounts and even domain registration/management.
That being said…. What would happen if Facebook or Twitter got into this business? What if they purchased Dreamhost? Or another well-respected Web Hosting Company? Facebook would be the host of my efforts to become dependent of Facebook? How strange. And at this point, Facebook can either acquire or become their own traditional Interweb Hosting platform and circumvent the whole issue of being the evil data silo. They would just offer paid services (or even free) to those who want to have that deeper level of ownership and control. And they would know that the magority of their 500+million users would not even bother… yet they would appease the vocal evangelists of Open Federated Interoperable Networks.
And besides, Facebook is already planning to launch its own Gmail competing product. Expect to see Fmail (Facebook Mail) at some point soon.
This applies to Twitter, Google and any other behomoth that wants to be host to your social profile, activities and graph.
The downside is…. They would have to provide adequate customer service… call centers… and quality service with proper uptime etc. This is a new game from the free service arena with mostly non-existent customer support. But this type of move would entail call centers to be setup or part of the acquisition(s). Truth is, most of it would be outsourced and out of mind.
If I were Facebook, I’d get this going just to have all my bases covered towards continued world dominance 
Yeah so… anyway… just was an interesting mind wandering thought process. figured i would log it here for a told ya so moment in 6-12 months. heh.
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