Facebook For Business? Nada.

A NY Times story in the technology section describes how Facebook has opened it's data doors and describes what Facebook is doing in this way:

After establishing his store as a vibrant enterprise and a hive of neighborhood activity, Joe makes a strange decision: he props open the front door and invites everyone to come in, take the merchandise free of charge, and then give it away themselves.

All the extra foot traffic, Joe says, will make Joe’s Foods the social center of the community.

That is roughly comparable to what Facebook, the popular social network, did this past week. In a loud and proud public announcement, it said it didn’t care whether its members visited Facebook.com at all...

Of course if your posting the kind of information that's common on Twitter and Facebook you don't have any need for data security, reporting capabilities or applications delivery. Twitter and Facebook focus on one end of the spectrum when it comes to delivering content; pushing it out to as many people as possible. This is certainly needed and is becomming incredibly efficient and easy to do...

But it's not a business solution.

Facebook, Twitter and the growing swell of social networks are at best an advertising and marketing area for businesses, you might be looking for a headshot, do it yourself SEO, or finding an social media agency, but you're not going to be receiving your bank statement, legal records or sign contracts electronically on Twitter.

The fact that Facebook has made they're entire network and information available to anyone shows exacly how important the content on Facebook is... not very.

In order to meet business needs you have to actually have the capabilites to deliver security and direct one-to-one communications.

Email is still the most common web application and use by far. (Search is a distant second.) People and business have much greater needs to communicate individually than post something that anyone and everyone can read. I may read your Facebook page or Twitter stream, but the content there moves a thousand miles an hour and is paper thin.

Facebook has opened its doors to developers because that's the kind of content they have. Important content has different needs and sits outside of Facbooks domain.