I don't think it should be a joke at all. It seems to me that a company that doesn't know what its business plan is should probably be hiring people who have a talent for making business plans.

Just because they don't talk about it, doesn't mean they don't have ideas and plans on how to proceed.

It would seem like good policy for a company built on the premise that everyone should share their information to actually share their information. I'm not saying that they don't have ideas and plans on how to proceed, I'm just saying that if they were really confident about the viability of those plans, they'd be more vocal about them.

As it is, my own guess is that facebook's business plan involves selling the personal information of its members. This would be the most obvious commodity and also the most obvious reason why facebook wouldn't want to talk about their business plans.

Much more than personal information, what facebook can monetize is identity & relationships.

For example, with Facebook Connect, it's much harder to be an anonymous troll commenter on a blog. And maybe using Facebook Connect as a login for eCommerce sites would reduce the amount of fraud those sites have to deal with. That is definitely monetizeable.

Remember Beacon? They do. They're careful.

oh come on, in this economy, if anyone had a "make $$$ NOW" button under their desk, it would have been pushed long ago. their secret plan was to ride a bubble in the markets, but thats over. i feel bad for the rank and file, if zuck had done an ipo in mid-2007, the rank and file could have made some serious cash.