If you're like me, you're of two minds about Facebook. On the one hand, you enjoy dipping in to add "friends" you might not know all that well, upload pictures few will see, and post status updates ("getting ready for the weekend, yo") the world is waiting for with baited breath. At the same time, I can't help but wonder, where the heck is this timewaster in search of a business purpose headed?Don't get me wrong: I love Facebook, and I actually think it will turn out to be an important business-interaction tool. (Indeed, I'm a registered Facebook developer and have built a bunch of lightweight applications.) However, I also think we're all getting a bit ahead of ourselves, in that right now its utility hasn't come anywhere near matching its hype.

This admittedly unoriginal observation hit me again yesterday, upon reading the news that ComScore has anointed Facebook the top social network. (No.2 is MySpace, which now amounts to a Facebook on training wheels, notwithstanding the fact that the latter network has been aping the look and feel of the former one.)

True, LinkedIn remains the go-to destination for people who are under the delusion that they're gonna get recruited for a hot job. Nevertheless, Facebook is pulling ahead, because it has leveraged its multimedia appeal (its user interface just looks better; plus, you can post pictures!) to become the place most of us go whenever we can't figure out where else to go on the Web.

Which begs the question, what does Facebook need to do so that we don't abandon it when the "next big thing" comes along. I believe there are two things it should do immediately, while there's a window of opportunity.