Facebook has come along way from being Mark Zuckerberg’s afterschool project. In fact “The Facebook Effect”, author David Kirkpatrick implied at TechCrunch Disrupt that Facebook was so influential it should be governed by the United Nations, “They are too important to our culture to be left to a private corporation” he said.

But, despite the fact that at 500 million users Facebook has just under twice the population of the United States, it is a business not a country. And while Google is currently the most visited site on the Internet with about 170,000 or so unique visits in July, the levels of interaction that we have with Facebook are more often and more intimate, which makes it the most important site on the Internet today.

The amount of time we spend on Facebook underscores the fact that we not only longer live in geopolitical countries but digital ones. And we often as citizens of these digital domains forget that the end game of  these platforms is “make money” which means that companies like Facebook must take steps to preserve business models based on lead generation and the monetization of user data, and that those steps are often against users’ best interests, literally.

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Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next?  What does a truly advanced company look like in social business?  They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria.

We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

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And Facebook is nowhere on Ping, either. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook–or Twitter or MySpace–on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” related to connecting with Facebook friends on Ping.

For those who are struck by the word, the definition of onerous, according to an online dictionary: “Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.”

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate connecting with Facebook or even using Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Okay, although being more open would work too!

Talk about ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ — here we have Steve Jobs complaining about another tech company and their onerous business terms. Jobs is the king of onerous terms and it’s the main reason why Apple only picks weak business partners like AT&T for their products. Onerous terms and attitude are the ‘Achilles Heel’ of Jobs and Apple…

Here’s a bone for the Mac fanboys on the list…

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