I’ve been saying this for a while now and after the changes on Facebook last week and a couple of other articles I have read, all of a sudden my “conspiracy theory” doesn’t seem so wacky.

It all goes down to Facebook credits. If you don’t know what Facebook credits are then it is a virtual currency you can get from Facebook that allows you to buy stuff within Facebook, mainly being used in games like Farmville or The Sims. The more credit you buy, the more you can do/buy/exchange etc.  So here is my conspiracy theory:

• Hypothetically speaking you can buy £10 worth of Facebook credits. Now lets say £10 was worth 100FC
• You see a DVD (Inception) you would like to buy from Amazon that costs £10
• Facebook does a deal with Amazon and other vendors to say that people can now buy products with Facebook Credits allowing the virtual currency to be used outside of the walls of Facebook
• As part of the deal, Facebook offers discounts and can agree prices/deals with vendors
• The DVD (Inception) you like costs 80 FC, which has a value of £8
• You buy the DVD with Facebook credits for the value of £8 rather than using your credit card and paying the value of £10
• Once this happens, Facebook has created a global currency………..Now you can see the real power of Facebook.

Sounds crazy right? Bit unbelievable? Well Big Brother on Channel 5, the 1st UK TV show to use Facebook credits has essentially done just that. To call it costs 36p per vote(land-line but mobiles are considerably higher) but to go on Facebook and buy Facebook credits it costs 7p per vote…5 times cheaper than calling from a land-line.

Now i’m not saying this will happen but everything is in place for it to happen. It just goes down to the deals they can potentially make. Is this a bad thing though? For us we could be getting huge discounts and great deals right? ….But  for someone who has studied the history and value of currency (not money), this to me is pretty damn scary.

Thoughts?