Yesterday’s big news was that Facebook has expanded their platform to the general web. According to developers, this service was already accessible via backend methods but there is now a client facing version. Regardless of the technical aspect of Facebook’s new JavaScript service, their intentions are clear: Facebook wants to own the social graph. At the Graphing Social Patterns conference last October, Chamath Palihapitiya, Vice President of Product Marketing & Operations at Facebook, clearly stated that Facebook’s goal is to most acccurately store the “social graph.”

I would argue that Facebook has already accomplished that goal by reaching more users than LinkedIn who has the second most accurate version of the “social graph.” Facebook continues to grow at a quick pace and has expanded their reach far beyond college students. The question that remains unanswered is: can Facebook continue at this pace and avoid a mass exodus of users as a result of some unforseen privacy (or other) debacle?

Currently, Facebook has only been leveraged for relatively simple applications for the most part and much of its power has not yet been harnessed. Imagine if the majority of your social interaction on the web passed through Facebook including blog comments, forum posts, web queries, etc. Imagine if all of your family member could walk through your home security system thanks to them being placed in your “Family” group on Facebook.

Imagine when soldiers in the field can look at someone and have their Facebook profile immediately show up in their eye piece and learn everything about them and who they are connected to. Perhaps police will pull up your Facebook profile when they pull you over for a routine traffic violation. At a certain point, it begins to almost sound like science fiction but there would be an immense amount of value from having one completely accurate image of my social graph. This value is not only to myself but to other organizations as well.

Once you start to think of the creative ways that Facebook could be implemented for both good and bad, you have to begin to wonder if the world will let this exist. There are almost 70 million people now using Facebook and they are growing at a rate of over 250,000 users daily. So far there is no end in sight and people appear to be fine with putting their personal information as well as relationship information into the database. I’ve done it myself.

While I cannot tell you what will happen in the long-term, something significant is happening. Facebook will either pull of one of the greatest feats of our time or will crash and burn. The story so far has been impressive and in the next 12 to 24 months, much more will begin to unfold. Facebook’s initial steps may appear trivial but in the long-run the implications of a world-wide social graph transmuted into its virtual equivalent is substantial.

Do you think Facebook can pull it off? Do we want this to happen?