How could Facebook be partitioned? Will the government decreee that we must use separate social networks for text vs. images vs. video vs. events?
I've considered this, and I think only mild partitioning would be effective. For example, separating Instagram from facebook instead of integrating it further. This would do nothing to the site itself, though.
My solution would be to have facebook be more willing to work with other social networking sites. Right now facebook is like a telephone company that only allows folks to talk to others on the same network.
Minimally, the chat programs would need to communicate with each other, even if they didn't share all features (still needs to be very useful). Further changes would be things like allowing other social networks to view "public" things one posts or being able to friend across platforms.
This is unlikely to happen, though, if it is possible at all. I'm assuming that a standard would need to be agreed upon and they'll be quite the fight from facebook. Not to mention the sheer amount of work it would involve upfront or at least I'm assuming, as I'm one of the non-tech folks that are reading here.
However, a first step would be imposing FB to expose all features and user data using an open protocol to be defined.
That would be a good thing on its own, given that it would make possible for other networks to federate with Facebook. (And when you think about it, it's much closer to the usual Internet, think of SMTP, BGP... A monolithic service like FB is actually the exception!)
Moreover, it would set the ground for splitting Facebook into two (or possibily more) federated networks.
Geographically, same as Bell.
This would destroy social networking. If you live in the same geographical region as someone, Facebook is adding little value to your interactions. Maintaining relationships between people who are too far away to interact regularly in person is kind of the point.
I'm interested in different ways of doing it, but in almost any scenario I think the networks would all be federated. Like email. You would still have all your distant friends, their messages would just originate from a different server than yours, with different corporate ownership. You could live in Japan and use the Central American product if you wanted. Many would switch around, that would be the point... some competition. If any network got too big it would just split again.
Geography would force users under a specific service provider only at the moment of the split. After that it's a market-based free for all again.
There would just be n forks of the Facebook source with n corporations in n regions, and shareholders would get 1/n shares of each stock. I think it would be a boon to both social networking and shareholder value.