Another falling off the treadmill moment

This morning, it was the headline: "Microsoft deal values Facebook at $15 billion" on CNN that got me slowing down just so that I could fire up Safari on my iPhone to check the story. Fortunately, the news was not that Microsoft had bought Facebook for $15 billion, but that it only invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake. While the story now is just about monetizing Facebook's 49 million strong user base through online advertising, there's actually a lot more at stake. I was gunning for a Google buy, but at least now there's going to be an interesting game afoot in the "social computing" space. There's so much potential here, pitfalls as well (especially when it comes to privacy issues), but what's to come is definitely going to be one of those change-the-way-we-live-and-do-business moments. For one, it has the potential to make obsolete middlemen-type industries/businesses that survive because of market inefficiencies or lack of transparency. Just imagine the power of Google's online search and productivity capability X Facebook's online transparent web of global consumer consciousness X Wiki's knowledge aggregation, all tapped from the Safari browser of an Apple iPhone. Right now, the two missing links are seamless global wifi access and a global, paypal-type solution on a mobile platform to really change the world's economic landscape. A lot of playing fields will get leveled. Of course, this is probably what's keeping the Facebook management team up at night, since paypal's founder Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund is one of Facebook's seed investors. My head's spinning and it's not from the running; it could be from holding my breath waiting for the future to arrive though.