This, really is what Facebook and rival social networkers are fundamentally about, getting users to adopt their particular format for organizing web activities, their particular relational format.
Example: What is the relational form of this blog? A table of posts with a table of [empty] comments. Go back a year as I was tinkering with SQLite3, and you will find a simple way to make a data base for posts and comments. The display of that database, the thing that you the reader is looking at, is done with scripts, ready made to display from relational databases. In other words, Facebook owns no actual technology or property of substance, just a magazine format.
It is not clear to me that these are multi-billion dollar battles. This is an environment in which many geeks can make many versions of social relational structure; and then expand these on the web using MySql, SQLite3, and associated web scripts. Many geeks will do that, and this Facebook thing will splinter in a thousand pieces as web users self select the representational form they need.
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