Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (AP Photo)

The author is a Canadian freelance writer specializing in technology.

Even those of us who have followed the technology scene for a long time have to marvel at the astonishing growth of Facebook — but what does it mean for business?

Launched February 2004 primarily as a way for university students to share homework assignments, and opened up to all internet users only last year, Facebook has caught on with the general public remarkably fast.

By the end of this year, it will have an estimated 60 million users worldwide, 600,000 of whom reside in Toronto alone. For anybody who runs a business, and for those seeking to expand their professional network of contacts and potential customers, that's a number just too huge to ignore.

But does a social network make a good business tool? Well, yes and no.

David Forde, a web-based publisher and organizer of a series of technology events under the umbrella title of Toronto Tech Week, planned for May of next year, says he swears by it — but only for now.

"I have set up a group that I use to promote events and extend my network. And it's so easy to add graphics, pictures and video, which serves to draw even more people in."

Forde jokes that there are drawbacks to being on Facebook: It's not very good for guys who want to hide from their ex-girlfriends. Nor does it appear be too popular among security, and privacy-minded chief information officers, or the older guys and gals in corporations who "just don't get it."

For anybody with a small business, it's a cheap and easy way to advertise. Long-term, however, Forde thinks it will be a different story.

"In five years, we will all be laughing at Facebook, and for that matter, this whole social networking phenomenon," he says.

At the end of the day, he figures it's a tool with a limited life span.

Indeed, the problem with using social networks such as Facebook is general mistrust of their long-term viability. These virtual communities are as easy to leave as they are to join in, and it's so easy for millions of users of one system to migrate to any other better communications system that may come along. It doesn't help that Facebook's core audience — teenagers and young adults — tend to be a fickle bunch.

Facebook users may want to take a lesson from rival MySpace, which claims 70 million users worldwide but could soon be facing a drastic turnaround in its fortunes. For an opinion, I went to the heaviest social network user I could find: My daughter.

"As for MySpace, well, it's still around but every one I know is quitting it," she says.

Where do we go from here?

Stephen Ibaraki, a Vancouver-based consultant and publisher of a website for IT professionals agrees social networks will have a limited lifespan.

"Only recently have business professionals begun using Facebook, including some fairly senior people — already these people are asking what the next big tool will be," he says.

First of all, it's highly unlikely corporations, which now use expensive, feature-rich customer relationship management software, will want migrate down — let alone interconnect into — a social network. Companies simply have too much invested in such systems.

Plus, the fact that so many companies and educational institutions have blocked Facebook access by their employees or students should also tell us something: It's not a tool that most organizations want their people to have.

And there is always a question about what happens when the big boys move in.

Google, for example, has name recognition, market momentum and technology base — and a yet-to-be formally introduced social networking platform called OpenSocial, which will provide tools for developers to create applications and widgets that can be moved to any participating network.

It's a corporate strategy that suggests the future of social networking is as a tool embedded in a larger software platform. That leads me to think that social networks that are a distinct product, like the Facebook site, will likely disappear.

Look for the same kind of thing from Microsoft, with all that marketing muscle to devote to a serious move into social networking. It began with last month's $240 million minority share investment in Facebook, and will continue as Microsoft adds to its suite of competing products.

Essentially, Facebook could suffer the same fate as all the graphics, database and word processing companies that once competed with Microsoft: Eventually it all gets rolled into one product suite.

Will Facebook stand the test of time? That's anybody's guess. And things stand to get more interesting in the short term following Facebook's recent announcement that it plans to let companies create their own pages for the first time, and aim ads directly at different communities of users based on what they buy and do online.

For small businesses looking to expand and manage its customer base, social networking may indeed serve a purpose — if only in the short term.

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