Remember AOL?

Back in its heyday the company had a bigger valuation than old world media companies. That stratospheric valuation allowed it to acquire Time-Warner. Today the company is consigned to the history books as an important lesson in media evolution.

Same can be said for Facebook or MySpace or ClassMates.com. Why?

These sites provide great services - they allow us to connect with friends ole and new around the globe. We can reunite because of school ties or assemble for the first time due to shared hobbies and causes, be it cribbage or ending the war in Iraq.

Yet Facebook is building the barriers that will ultimately lead to its demise.

To enter you need an account. Your information remains within the “gated community” and cannot be accessed except by other members. It’s not searchable from outside. And even if you participate and build an entire network, you have to start over if you swap to another site. Look at the poor souls who started on MySpace and now find the “cool” crowd are all on FaceBook.

Last week The Economist penned an excellent editorial citing this very trend.

Today open platform communities allow many of the same functions without the onus restrictions. If Facebook doesn’t reinvent itself soon as an open community it will become irrelevant like AOL.

The idea of a gated community on the Internet is, like, so two weeks ago!