Hi, I'm Phil Freo

Facebook – after recently getting a “facelift” with its News Feed (which delivers constantly updated information about your friends) and Mini-Feed (to show your friends what you have been up to) – has been up to a lot more. By opening itself up to anyone with any email address today, the once-exclusive social networking site can now be accessed by anyone. This is not big news though, Zuckerberg announced this would happen a while ago.

What I do find interesting, is how the site identifies users as unique…

As my friend Bryan Scott (of CampusTrade.com) recently mentioned, it is extremely easy for someone to get multiple email addresses. What is not easy to get is multiple cell phones. Therefore, if websites should use cell phones as unique identifiers to make it much harder for spammers and bots to abuse systems. Two weeks ago we were trying to figure out what that means for TapNote, and today Facebook is using the same idea.

Public email account users (those without a school or work email address) who do not confirm their cell phone address on Facebook can still do everything on the site. They are, however, required to enter one of those “are you a human” image codes every time they want to interact with someone on the website.

By doing this, Facebook has ensured that it stays spam-free, as it grows extremely quickly. I can only image where Facebook will be in another year. And I don’t just mean at Yahoo!.