When Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed the company from being a niche business to a mass audience site, it was a huge gamble for sure.
The problem with that move is that general audience businesses are few and far between and declining; no matter what platform they are being engaged in. Obviously this is an attempt to increase numbers because he wants to sell the site to a company that still lives under the illusion that there is such a thing a mass audiences and mass media.
That's not a bad strategy if he times it right and the numbers keep on growing.
Now the problem he is already encountering with the change to reaching a general audience is the "cool" factor of the business. While 
this is impossible to measure, it's a huge part of what the company was.
The challenge for Facebook is how can they keep growing and keep the "cool" factor in place. I believe the answer is that they can't.
There is also some controversy with rating service comScore Networks concerning Facebook's traffic numbers. Facebook says they're much higher than comScore asserts.
If the company isn't going to be sold now, that really isn't that important, other than eventually showing the history to the potential future suitors.
What I'm waiting to see is how the demographics change over time from the open invitation for anybody to join. Will it go the way of MySpace and drift gradually to an older user? Or will it first attract high school aged kids itching to be a part of the community?
With already turning down an $800 million offer from Yahoo (YHOO), the business is at the apex of what is going to happen. Companies believe that they are going to go down in usage and be able to negotiate at a lower price. Zuckerberg thinks he can grow the numbers and even get more. It's not going to take long to see which way it goes.
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