If you were there for Compuserve, AOL, Tripod, Friendster, Orkut, MySpace or LinkedIn, you might have believed the same thing about any one of those social networks. Remember when those CD Roms from AOL came in the mail almost every day? The company was considered ubiquitous, invincible. Former AOL CEO Steve Case was no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg.

Further confirming that the hype and market has reached its peak, social networking competitor LinkedIn is maneuvering toward its own IPO, which it likely hopes to complete before Facebook eventually gets there and poisons the well. These companies are being valued as if they will be our permanent means for identifying ourselves.