I am consistently more impressed by the innovations emerging from one web company in particular than any other, and no, it’s not Google or Microsoft or Myspace or Wikipedia.

There is another company that seems to innovate much faster, and focus more strongly on being very useful in many interesting ways to many people, that has very rich information on its users, and is growing by leaps and bounds. For a youthful demographic, it is perhaps the most important site they stay on.

I’m talking, of course, about Facebook. With a clean elegant interface, and a degree of usefulness that infuses the whole site, it’s not really a social network site. It’s a social utility.

Signs of its power are growing. Among the younger generations, Myspace’s unruly ugliness has been eclipsed by Facebook’s elegant interface. (Rupert Murdoch, are you listening?)

And the true power of Facebook hasn’t hit the entertainment and business worlds yet, despite the fact it would be very useful to those worlds.

And Facebook isn’t stopping. It continues to evolve into something more powerful. They are now announcing that they are opening their website to outside application developers. For Facebook this may mean they are creating an even richer ecosystem of data and usefulness.

For the users of Facebook, this should let you see when and what applications friends are adopting, which could be very interesting in encouraging you to adopt new features on the site.

For developers, the applications can not only take advantage of the size and this new form of viral growth in the Facebook community, but they will also potentially be able to take advantage of the rich information Facebook has about its customers and their relationships to each other. If before it was difficult to compete with eBay’s stranglehold on buyers and sellers, the Facebook ecosystem may make it easier for an eBay competitor to emerge.

If Google is trying to create one super computer that solves all of your information needs, Facebook is creating one ecosystem that can do the same thing.

If Facebook ever ponders creating a search solution, Google look out.

For more, on Facebook’s past, present and future, see the Fortune magazine article here:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007052417

Or find out more about Facebook’s application initiative here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/24/facebook-launches-facebook-platform-they-are-the-anti-myspace/

Update, 5/31/07: An excellent analysis of Facebook’s core power can be found here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/121140079/

Update, 7/7/07: Rupert Murdoch, the power behind Myspace, recognizes Facebook’s ascendancy, as I point out here: http://www.mathoda.com/archives/165