Today marks the beginning of Facebook’s end.

As the Associated Press and USA Today first reported late Monday night, Facebook.com will open its membership to everyone with a valid e-mail address–students and non-students alike–within a month. Facebook had initially planned to announce the change today, but execs rescheduled the launch after users complained about the News Feed and Mini Feed features, forcing the site to add new privacy controls.

The reason for the expansion is simple: MySpace, which has always been open to all and is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, features 30.1 million users. And, according to USA Today, Facebook has only 9.3 million users (though The New York Times puts that figure even lower, at 6.1 million). So this move is an attempt to catch the conglomerate, a chance for the 150-person, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook to go even bigger.

When the revamped site launches, Facebook will divide the world into 500 geographic regions. Those living in a certain region will have access to every other profile in that region, by default.

But by opening its users up to the outside world, it’s obvious that Facebook’s attempt to divide and conquer will fail. Facebook, after all, arose out of the ashes of Friendster, one of the first social networking sites to gain serious popularity. What Facebook offered–and Friendster lacked–was privacy, as in the ability to hide one’s information from everyone but his close friends and the ability to shut off the world outside of one’s university, or, more recently, high school.

Of course, MySpace does not offer such privacy, and as such, it has become a giant of the Internet (though Rupert Murdoch spends way too much money on rent). Last week, MySpace even announced plans to sell digital music and, in the process, take on iTunes.

But whatever the reason for MySpace’s success–and there are many–the fact is that MySpace already exists. It had 51.4 million unique visitors in May alone and was bought last year in a deal worth approximately $580 million. Those numbers are big. And they don’t leave much room for a serious competitor.

Indeed, the new Facebook won’t offer anything that MySpace doesn’t already have. Worse, its new features will alienate its current base. No punk college kid will want his mother screening photos of his frat exploits. And no serious student will risk future employment by posting personal information on a site available to all employers.

This is a recipe for disaster.

And to be honest, I’m a bit excited–for two reasons. The first is basic: Facebook denied the first rule of business–that the customer is always right–and now its founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, will have to listen to the people.
In layman’s terms: Zuckerberg violated students’ privacy by posting their exploits in a News Feed. Now, after students complained, he’s eliminating privacy altogether. And the students will revolt.

The second reason I’m giddy dates back to November 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg agreed to work on ConnectU.com, a Web site being developed under the name “HarvardConnection” by a few of Zuckerberg’s Crimson classmates.
That site’s founders charged Zuckerberg with creating its programming. Instead, Zuckerberg spent the next few months developing the Facebook, while writing e-mails to his ConnectU friends like “Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I’ve basically been in the lab the whole time working on a CS problem set which I’m still not finished with.”

Zuckerberg never told his ConnectU friends about the Facebook, and they only found out about it from an article in the Harvard student newspaper after Facebook launched in the beginning of 2004.

Two years ago, the ConnectU founders filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal court, alleging that “Zuckerberg stole their idea and connived to delay the site’s launch so that he could complete Facebook first,” according to a May New Yorker article. Now, I’m not saying that Zuckerberg definitely stole the idea of Facebook, as I don’t know. And the case probably won’t go to trial until next year. But wouldn’t it be cosmic justice if Facebook ultimately lost out to tiny, student-exclusive ConnectU?

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