It occured to me about a year or so ago that Facebook is gradually taking over the web. Not only is it aiding revolutions and people are actually naming children after it, but small businesses are no longer as interested in developing their own sites, friends are posting  photos on Facebook - not Flickr and people are emailing me through Facebook rather than through email accounts on Gmail or Yahoo. If Facebook can replace email services and web sites, what is left before it can completely conquer the web? There are really only two things it needs to master.

Search

Google and Bing dominate searches today, but it shouldn’t be too difficult for Facebook to add that in. They are already incorporating Likes into Bing  adding what it is calling a “social layer” and Facebook updates have been searchable for years. Facebook already has the social layer down pat, getting the actual search results couldn’t be out of reach for them. Would you rather go to a site because it ranked high up in an algorythm or one that lots of your “friends” like?

eCommerce

The biggest drawback for a company wanting to represent themselves solely on Facebook is that they lose some interaction in terms of forms gathering data or in actually selling their products on Facebook. Facebook is improving the pages features today and more interactive integration can’t be far behind. They could always start small by acting more like an aggregator like Kayak, Shopzilla or BizRate.  Then friends can like those items (adding that “social layer” again) and drive traffic to Amazon or whatever site while getting credit for the click.

What Facebook has and what everyone wants is its audience and that audience gives it tons of valuable content –  absolutely free. Whenever I’m asked which site I think does the poorest job of design, I always say Facebook, and I still believe that. Finding information is difficult and aesthetically it is very bland, but this is a case of content being king. As long as my sister-in-law posts pictures of my newborn niece on Facebook instead of Flickr and as long as my oldest friend keeps sending me email through Facebook, they’ve got me. I might as well buy some shoes on there as well.