“Facebook messages are about to be publicly visible. A whole lot of people are going to hate it. When ex-lovers, bosses, moms, stalkers, cops, creeps and others find out what people have been posting on Facebook - the reprimand that “well, you could have changed your default setting” is not going to sit well with people.
Robots FTW
The soft fleshed creatures that we Facebook users are will likely hate the new setting, at least at first. But robots are going to love it. As the largest social network on the web, with an incredible amount of time spent on the site by its users, Facebook holds a giant reservoir of demographic and sentiment data. It is the mother lode - and it’s been inaccessible so far because everything has been private so far.”

I’ve been saying this for years about Facebook (since it’s sky high market value was decided) but I always hoped I was wrong. Possibly the greatest bait-and-switch of our generation - give people a platform to extend their real world relationships online and earn their trust through privacy and deception that this online communication is as intimate as offline interaction with actual friends / family / colleagues / et al. Amass immeasurable amounts of REAL - not simulated or surveyed - data about individuals, demographics, and their precise habits of interest and consumption, sell it to the highest bidder.

Who needs Nielsen ratings when Facebook API can give you realtime information about who’s discussing Transformers or Drake by zip code, neighborhood, time of day, where they work, where they went to school, similar interests, political affiliation, religion, relationship status, events attended, social reach… even when you knew all of this was possible and probable, it’s like wandering around on the Planet of The Apes for five years only to arrive at the decayed rubble of the lady liberty… and thousands of drunk frat boys trying to get her to show some nip and make out with another chick so they can post it from their iphones.