This is an interesting story. Facebook appears to want Power.com to use its Facebook Connect technology, rather than another mode of accessing its content.  Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times covers the news here.

This lawsuit illustrates a few things about the web.

First, Esther Dyson is everywhere.  (See the earlier post about my fortunate meeting with her on January 1st.)  She is an angel investor in Power.com.

Second, The Internationalization of Everything.  Check this out from Power.com’s About Us page:

Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Power.com is a privately held company with 70 people. Power.com has additional offices in San Francisco, California and Hyderabad, India.

(Smart bunch of people running this company.  I have a feeling I’ve met Igor Barenboim at some point in the past.  Could be wrong, but the name is familiar somehow.)

Third, social network aggregation is coming, or at least trying to come.  Power.com is a kind of aggregator of access to social networks, a meta-network or -portal that allows users to control various profiles from one place.  Here is Matt Marshall’s thoughtful and thorough commentary on Power.com and the social network aggregation/access point landscape.

Fourth, the battle for real estate is not going away.  Market leading or dominant companies like Facebook are understandably eager to control key access points.  Some companies are not afraid to use closed standards to carve up parts of the web to maximize their revenue streams.  Jonathan Zittrain, in his book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, observes what he views as a disturbing trend toward vendor-controlled architecture.  (Zittrain’s argument has more to do with closed hardware platforms, but it might be applied to web-enabled software platforms, too.)  Perhaps this suit is another step in that direction?

Here’s a case in which law enforcement were able to apprehend suspects due to online postings:

January 3, 2009 (AP)

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Investigators in Ohio say they have YouTube to thank for arrests in connection with a large disturbance.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office said Friday it arrested two people and issued warrants for three others for the fight in Twinsburg Township outside Akron.

Sheriff’s Patrol Commander Major Roger Kline says people were already leaving the scene when police arrived at the disturbance in October.

But then police got a tip that someone had posted a five-minute, 16-second video of the fight on the YouTube video-sharing Web service.

Police said they were able to identify suspects after watching the video and conferring with Twinsburg High School teachers and administrators.

I met with Esther Dyson today at 10 am. She is something. We met at the Meetup offices in Manhattan, since she is on the board of the company. The office was empty due to the holiday, which made it very peaceful. Esther just returned, last night, from Star City, Russia, where she is training to be a cosmonaut. She is the backup to Charles Simonyi for a flight that is scheduled to launch in March.

Esther (to whom I was introduced by my friend Peter Corsell, who is very accomplished in his own right) is a journalist, investor, and, if the word is permitted, a futurist.  She has commented on a variety of topics that relate directly to what Reputation.com does.  For example, she has written about the increasing capability of computing power to help us make narrative sense of vast quantities of data, including ones that help us understand ourselves in the context of others. Esther is also very interested in genetic mapping and DNA analysis and, increasingly, in the growing field of commercial space flight.

Good luck to Esther on her continued space training.

(Separate note: Meetup.com has a beautiful space; beautiful views of New York on the 10th floor, lovely cubes–they have translucent walls; hardwood floors; a dedicated sleeping room with daybed; bright colors all over the walls.  Kudos to the Meetup team.)