The Economist recently ranked Facebook third in size to the population of other countries and asked the question, "What other country-like features does Facebook have?"
According to the article, Facebook faces challenges similar to that of sovereign states: like the challenges of governing, protecting privacy, creating currency, guiding economic development, providing services, and pleasing users/citizens.
To bring the comparison up close... New in office, the prime minister of Britain, David Cameron, turned to Facebook's founder for advice on ways social networks can help governments. No doubt Cameron and Zuckerberg have a few things in common as leaders. Specifically, as The Economist noted, they both know now how it feels to be responsible for and accountable to many millions of people -- people who expect things from them, even though in most cases they will never shake their hands.
Zuckerberg aims to have eventually a billion users on Facebook. Can we imagine the economic impact of this social networking revolution, when Facebook is the size of China and India? How about the educational possibilities?
