"Markets are partying like it’s 1999 again" — Still Better: Facebook to become the world's largest bank by 2015

As several people mentioned to me in the past several days, sentiment is extreme, indeed, but it can always get more extreme. This is true, and here's just another proof. Oh and this genius forecaster prides himself as being the fist person to coin the term “Web 3.0”. Well, here, I coin the term Web 4.0™©®. Done.

The explosion of social networking commerce will lead to the unlikely candidate of Facebook becoming the world’s biggest bank by the middle of the decade, according to a technology observer and entrepreneur.

People who don’t have a Facebook account should get one or risk having a financial profile created for them says founder and president of Metal International, Ken Rutkowski.
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“Facebook will be the largest bank by 2015. I hear you say ‘how can they be a bank’ what’s going on?”

According to Rutkowski, Facebook credits allow people to play games and Facebook is already doing deals with the banks for credit profiles.

“If you play games on Facebook, which, by the way 40 to 50 per cent of the time spent on Facebook is playing games, and those games – like Farmville and Mafia Wars – are paid for and you have to buy credits for that and they are called Facebook Credits.”

Rutkowski cited the company Zynga that created Farmville as being worth almost $12 billion now and it “didn’t even exist 18 months ago”.

“In China and a lot of the Asian areas right now that is becoming a massive revenue source and that currency is going to start spreading and Facebook is doing deals with banks around the world right now to create an exchange mechanism,” he said.

“Why is its important to have a profile? They are going to start using that to determine what your credit worthiness is.”

“By the way, if you don’t have a profile they will make one for you so it’s better for you to create it and manage it than them. That’s why you want to be selective with what you put on there. If you have kids that are being idiots online make sure you stop them right away as they are creating a pretty negative profile long term and it happens often.”

Rutkowski runs the Founder Institute in Los Angeles which launches about 1000 companies year and prides himself as being the fist person to coin the term “Web 3.0” during a press conference with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Rutkowski asked Schmidt what Google was doing with “Web 3.0” and Schmidt replied Web 2.0 was just a marketing term and that he was “the inventor” of Web 3.0.
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