We’ve talked so much about Facebook that at one point we had to refrain from writing about it for the sake of the opinion section becoming a place where we talk about Facebook.

It’s clear that Facebook is a pretty big deal, and you probably heard they recently filed to go public. Yes, we will start to see FB ticking across the board along with AAPL, GE, and SHS, at a hopeful valuation of $5 billion.

Facebook has just begun impacting our world and how we communicate. The only numbers I want you to be aware of are the following: One billion people have a Facebook account; half of them, or shall I say us, use Facebook on a daily basis; Facebook is available in more than 70 languages; and just last year it spent $388 million on research and development.

If those numbers don’t speak to you how much of an impact Facebook has already made in our world I don’t know will.

Point is that Facebook is the place where we message our friends and family, stay up-to-date on each others lives as well as people we admire or want to subscribe to, upload and share our photos, and like certain pages that are mainly company brands, such as Coca-Cola, Ford, The New York Times or even as local as the Iowa State Daily and our sports teams. And we can do all of this with ease and in the comfort of our own native or preferred language.

In just shy of eight years, the people behind Facebook along with us have created an online community that continues to shape our reality. Is this shaping for better or for worse?

That’s the question, and through a successful IPO filing as well as the increasing amount put into research and development, Facebook is changing our society and our world in the same way Apple does. Facebook is changing how we view and interact with the Internet as Apple is changing how we view and interact with devices.

Both are big endeavors, and we can first thank them for their dedicated hard work for all these years. But what goes unmentioned by many is how we’re deeply embedded in all of this from following their endeavor. This is represented in the Facebook statistics I previously mentioned.

There are three elements of Facebook that are so embedded into you and I that we begin to unconsciously use these elements in our communication and actions. Those elements being: liking, sharing moments and activities, and using your Facebook account as the login for many other Internet properties.

Let’s begin the discovery of returning to consciousness.

Probably the easiest and most popular action we do is “like” something. It could be our friend’s status, the music they’re playing, some famous comedian’s status or a page belonging to an interest, company or music group. A like shows two things.

It shows, one, you’ve acknowledged whatever it is another person is doing to feel some sort of closer connection with that person, whether or not we are looking to further our relationship. And two, it is what it is. It’s you showing that you like it as well, which has the possibility of creating a stronger connection with the person or page’s status or activity you’ve decided to like.

We get into this mode where we better like something otherwise people will wonder why we haven’t. We are even beginning to say, “I’d like that if it were a status.”

Next element is the ease of sharing the moments you create off of Facebook as well as any activity you are doing while connected to the Internet. Not only is having these moments stored great for building memories, but it allows any of your friends and family to feel a part of that moment even if they were there or not. And your activity is now being monitored by anyone you allow to.

Through sharing moments and your online activity, you’re showing more and more about yourself and building or tearing down any connections with others. I think of this as if you are constantly at a party or group gathering getting to know new people as well as catching up with current friends and you start sharing information like any good social human being does.

Is Facebook helping us or preventing us from having to do this in real life? You could argue both, and in many cases it’s making those that have been seen as quiet an opportunity to express themselves. The Internet does this, and Facebook has mass produced a platform for all of this to go down.

Finally, we have the element of using our Facebook credentials to log in into other online properties. Why do these online properties offer this option? A better question is why do you choose to log in with your Facebook account as opposed to signing up with your email address?

It’s simple and easy. We can now easily sign up to new services and products online because of Facebook, and that respective site allows us to do so. Another benefit is we have then the option to get what some would say is a better experience because the opportunity for our friends and people we know to interact is too good to pass up.

We’re now signed up with all of these services and we have to do a better job of time management, managing our finances and getting away from our screens.

With these three elements I’ve highlighted how Facebook is becoming so integrated in our lives that we are beginning to live a life that some could argue has been transformed by Mark Zuckerberg and his team. Zuckerberg and his team are taking Facebook public, which ensures that all of this is real and is making an impact amongst you, me and so many others.

But, the question remains if what they are creating is what we want reality to be and how to live life or is this just something we could look back later in life as the Facebook age?

I do know that Facebook is not about to let their research and development fail in continuing usage from 1 billion or more people.