[JustUhThought]

The credit card model is a major departure from classical banking, so I wouldn't consider it a valid counter argument here. And besides, credit cards aren't about maximizing eyeballs, they are about maximizing fees and revenue. And I wasn't suggesting you were advocating lawlessness, I was suggesting you were comparing apples to oranges. Facebook and banking are based on totally different business models.

Banking, proper, retail custmers, includes merchant banks, investment banks, money markets, M&A, public markets debt and equity, and such. The piece seemed to boil it down to retail banking.

[brickcap]

Point taken, though I disagree with your assertions that credit cards don't have much to do with classical banking and that they are not about promotion.

It's also true that banking services are entirely different from facebook. But the goals are similar.

I guess one way to restate my opinion in a couple of lines would be

There are markets and customers that are not immediately in the operational radius of a local bank. Any bank that can create offerings that would appeal to such markets would stand to gain profit.

Also to flip the discussion we could ask if facebook were to create a bank how would they do it?