The internet world changes quickly, almost by definition, but I don't think I've ever seen a groundswell arise quite as fast as the one that is now lifting Facebook. Sure, Facebook has been around for three years, but since it launched a new platform strategy in May and invited developers to create their own Facebook applications, it's suddenly being seen as the Next Big Thing – maybe even the next Google.

As one measure of the Facebook hype, it was less than a year ago that chairman Mark Zuckerberg was drawing snickers for supposedly turning down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo! – and last week the rumor mill had Microsoft preparing to offer $6 billion for the company. Tech blogs and publications are full of excited chatter about the tens of thousands of new Facebook applications that have already been created, and how the social networking platform could become nothing less than everyone's home base on the internet.

I joined Facebook a few weeks ago, and I'm getting a couple of invitations a day from people I know inviting me to be their "friend." (These invitations now queue up with the ever-increasing number of invitations to connect on LinkedIn, a business networking site of which I have been a member for years.) I haven't spent much time messing around yet, but there certainly seems to be a lot to mess around with. And I'll be looking for the answer to two questions: is there anything Facebook can do for me personally, and is there anything it can do for my business?

On the first question, I honestly have my doubts. I've never been much of an online socialiser; I'll comment on stories or take part in conversations around issues I care about, but chat rooms and IM have never really been my thing. I spend so much of my work life online that I'm not much inclined to spend my leisure time there too, and it's not really obvious to me what problem it solves. I have lots of friends and lots of business connections and lots of ways to keep up with them; do I need another one? I do intend to get engaged enough with Facebook to really answer that question – if (the irony) I can find the time.

The second question is a very different one. If Facebook indeed becomes the online home for a substantial portion of the world, and if it provides enough features and functions to keep people within that world for long periods, than New West will have to figure out how to bring what we do to Facebook.

On one level, we want as many people as possible to come to NewWest.Net. But on another level, we want to bring NewWest – our journalism, our services, our sensibility, our brand – to as many people as possible, whatever their particular online habits might be. How to do this in a way that makes sense business-wise – on Facebook or anywhere else for that matter – is in some ways the great challenge for Web 2.0 journalism entrepreneurs.

There are still huge cosmic questions at play in the evolution of social networking. Will one site, or two, be dominant mass-market players, or will most people eventually migrate to more specialised communities? Will the "switching costs" – all those friend invitations – keep people loyal to one place, or will they be promiscuous, as a recent story in this newspaper suggested? Is Facebook the next Google – or the next AOL?

Since it's impossible to know the answers to these questions, I am proceeding for now on the assumption that since so many internet-savvy people I know and respect think Facebook will be a big thing, it will probably be a big thing. Let me know if you want to be my friend.

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Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

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