Yeah, I didn't do a great job conveying my perspective on what makes the true social graph. I don't believe social graph is just people. It's literally everything around you. Everything from TV show or broadcast you're watching or news you're hearing to even the environment and setting around us which is the weather.
Everything in life is connected - and that's the graph.
Facebook's social graph data is the closest digital form replication of our offline true social graph. Our true social graph is what affects every single innate decision and action we make and take, as well as structuring the way we are influenced.
While Facebook isn't a "news" platform, it is, however, a platform in its beginning stages (albeit, highly advanced) that shows you "content" that is most relevant to you - through the usage of the replicated social graph.
And you're right, I wouldn't ever go to state that "curated content" (if done right) will leave anytime soon, but the implicit personalization of everything on the web will become reality and nothing will nor should be static content.
1) although you can hope for it, you can't guarantee something will become viral. threewords.me could have just as easily been another "project" had it been pushed out at the wrong time, sent to the wrong people, etc. etc. there's a lot of luck involved. i'm glad it took off the way it did. Mark made sure he would maximize the viral potential by having it easily shareable, etc, but that alone didn't make it viral.
2) i'm just jealous that he got real time experience in learning to scale his servers to support the crazy growth in users. not many people in the world have experienced viral growth with their webapps or startups. so congrats to Mark.
Keep in mind that the $2B estimate is the run-rate meaning the current period's sale (Quarter or Month) multiplied to estimate the entire year's rate if the same rate continues.
Their current period's revenue is extremely high due to this season (with the year ending) carries high demand from businesses to make more $.
Realistically they are said to have an estimated revenue of around $850M so with their 50% cuts, take in $425M and after wages, expense and taxes, they are probably profiting somewhere around $100-150M
US has one of the highest total tax rate of both corporate and individuals when taking into account federal tax and state taxes.
i don't know anyone with a startup in Asia, but I can't see starting a company in China being easy.
I'd say Korea most likely has a good infrastructure of a growing tech startup ecosystem. they also have a relatively low corporate tax rate as well as individual rates.
two startups from S. Korea were part of the fbFund I believe.