Welcome to the People's Republic of Facebook

Reading in today's Financial Times that "The social networking site announced [yesterday] two new governing documents, the Facebook Principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities," I got to thinking about how Facebook seems to be evolving and morphing into an entity that's part country, part multinational corporation, à la Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash."

I mean, you've got your Facebook Principles/Bill of Rights (top) and your Statement of Rights and Responsibilities/Constitution (below).

You've got a population of 175-million plus that's growing by leaps and bounds and can communicate instantly, with smart mobs ready to mobilize anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's grand panjandrum, told the Wall Street Journal's Jessica E. Vascellaro, "This is about policy and the foundations.... We are going to take these policies and build them into the product, which changes every day."

Precisely.

The future belongs to the connected.

All others, your days of passing GO and collecting $200 just for showing up are over — well over .