Scoble did a post on why Microsoft doesn’t deserve Facebook, and the comment section got into a discussion about what Facebook should do– sell out, IPO, etc.  Most of the comments were the usual thing– people talking down Facebook, saying they should sell the company while they can still get a good price, etc., etc.

This sort of thing has been happening alot lately, and it’s starting to get on my nerves that no one seems to get it, so I weighed in with my own comment on the real value of Facebook– as the source of our online identities.  I was really happy when I checked in later and saw that I got some love from Mario Romero, who wrote my favorite Facebook app, Google Reader Shared Items.

Facebook’s valuation is so hard to pin down because they’re going after something that is absolutely huge– huge enough for Microsoft to make an enormous effort to go after it a few years back– but is incredibly challenging to pull off.  The fact that Microsoft failed completely– no one talks about Passport or HailStorm anymore– might have made people think that it couldn’t be done.  But Facebook has come up with a very clever strategy, and though they face several significant challenges, they are better positioned to make a go of this than anyone right now– better than any of the Big Five (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay.)

There’s something to all of this stuff that makes me feel like I’m living in some real-life version of The Usual Suspects– the greatest trick that Facebook ever pulled was convincing the world it didn’t want to manage our online identities.  I feel like we’ll be talking about this alot more over the next several months, as more people start to get it.

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