I’ve been blogging a lot lately about this whole economic crisis and how/why you might care. Lets switch gears a little bit and delve a little bit into the technology world… into the happy world of Facebook.

People are always talking about Facebook these days. Microsoft even threw them something like $240 million dollars just to be a minority stakeholder (no official decision making power). Why exactly is Facebook so damn cool from a business perspective other than because you can “socially network” aka “stalk all your friend’s hot friends?”

1. Because Microsoft cares - Ok, that a bit of an attention seeking headline. The history of companies that Microsoft has invested in or taken over is both extermely long and definitely not 100% successful. However, Microsoft is enormously rich, powerful and and is one of the most profitable companies on the face of the Earth. Ever.  They’ve thrown about $240M in investment capital at Facebook in exchange for having exclusive rights to deliver ads on Facebooks website + 2% stake in Facebook. Yes, those ones that you’ve never clicked on. Nevertheless, the fact that Microsoft is paying attention ($240M worth) is not something to ignored…

2. Because they hire great talent - Facebook is very busy snatching up all the bright minds in Silicon Valley. Even Google, with all their crazy, over-the-top perks is losing a crazy amount of people to Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s long time VP of Sales left months ago to become the COO at FB.com. As anyone who’s ever attempted a startup business or even worked in a corporate environment before, it takes much more than a brilliant idea to build a truly profitable business model. It takes smart, creative people who can work well with eachother and EXECUTE. Facebook seems to be building an army of those over there.

3. Because Social networking is obviously important - Social networking, from a business perspective is almost like the elusive fountain of youth or “Philosopher’s Stone” if you would… If you can find it, you can basically print money because you’ve figured out how to perfectly advertise to your audience (who you know everything about because they told you in their profiles). However, no one has figured it out. The trouble (like with email) is that no one wants to look at much less click on ads when they are looking at pictures of their friends an family. However, with all that money and brainpower…If anyone is going to “figure it out” aka monetize on that goldmine of user data, it should be Facebook. As long as Facebook keeps making smart moves and making the right investments, they should be able to keep ahead regardless of if anyone truly “figures it out” first.

4. They actually care about their users - Facebook has made mistakes. Big ones in fact. A great example of this is when they first rolled out the “friend feed” which basically made it so that all of everyones actions (most anyway) was published for everyone else to see. At first, EVERYONE hated it. I had friends who revolted and even shut down their accounts! However, a few days later, and I distinctly remember this; Mark Zuckerberg (young CEO and founder of Facebook) wrote a very personal apology letter that both explained the new feature, how to turn it off, and a sincere heartfelt apology for violating their user’s trust. I’m actually not entirely positive about everyone else, but after that I felt completely OK with the new feature as well as with anything else they would roll out in the future. People might hate it and Mark, the very top of FB.com would respond and take action.

5. Good technology - With good engineers comes good technology. Facebook has some of the best in class online applications already (social networking, photosharing and tagging, etc).  They’ve also got a [supposedly] great advertising platform that allows you to target very precise age groups and demographics - a much more targetted demographic targetting system than anything I’ve seen before. These tools, especially that advertising platform,  are the keys to unlocking the wealth that potentially lies in social networking. They have a tremendous start and the manpower to continue it. However, they aren’t there yet, and until they are - none of it really means a whole helluva whole lot.

Facebook is a very interesting company. They certainly have a lot going for them, certainly. However, in my opinion, they haven’t proven themselves as a truely revolutionary money making machine that everyone seems to already creditting them for. If they can figure out social networking and how to monetize it, I will be convinced.