Yes, I know, Facebook has been taking its lumps from users lately. Don’t know too many people happy with the Live Feed/ News Feed change. Another change really bothered me — the new Wall of Shame (my words) in the Suggestions area in the top right corner of the home page. If a friend hasn’t been active on their account, they get singled out for special attention. Facebook will tell me Betty Sue has been only 27% active, with a bar graph for emphasis. Or tell me she “only” has seven friends. Or suggest I reconnect with Betty Sue. Or, God forbid, “Poke” her. (Facebook’s term, not mine.)

The history of Facebook is filled with plenty of unpopular changes. Does anyone even remember the outcry on college campuses a few years ago when news feeds first began? The protests seem silly now in a social, hyper-connected, Twitter-fied world.

Facebook has amassed more than 300 million users, despite the occasional miscalculation, and is none the worse for wear. In fact, Facebook is making further changes, including one that especially will have a huge impact upon how businesses interact with consumers. And an early look at these changes finds that Facebook appears to have a solid grasp on a growth strategy.

(First, a quick note on a positive change coming for users: Developers soon won’t be able to use the Notification box to spam with solicitations to play games, download social apps, etc. Apps will move to the left sidebar, along with notifications from these apps. Apps-related messages will also appear in a channel inside the inbox. The idea is to make these messages less intrusive and to remove from news feeds and notifications. No more spam making me feel like a loser because I don’t care about Farmville.)

Now, the big change for business. Social media watchers everywhere are pondering the significance of Facebook’s Open Graph API, hinted at in a recent session at Facebook HQ. To vastly oversimplify, companies by early 2010 will be able to add the functionality of Facebook pages to their business sites, whether they have actual Fan pages or not.

Businesses will be able to update statuses or post content, with users leaving comments or liking items, etc., just as people do on Facebook. And that stream of activity also feeds back to Facebook where that activity reappears in the news stream of users.

Business gets a low-cost method to spur further interaction with users (and potential new customers) and increase time spent on their Web sites. Facebook gets a bonanza of data, expanded reach and new opportunities at growing revenue. Facebook also takes a giant step outside its closed garden and moves directly toward the center of the social Web. Much has been made of the war between Facebook and Google over who will control the social Web. Make no mistake: Facebook has fired a major shot.

There is another payoff for Facebook in these moves. With FB’s incredible past growth in the U.S., it’s obvious that at some point the company’s expansion domestically will flatten. What better way to expand reach, page views and length of visits on Facebook than to import your platform to other sites and still be able to monetize all that extra site activity generated.

I suspect that same thought was behind Facebook’s addition of the aforementioned Wall of Shame. The last thing Facebook wants is an inactive user. While I hate to see a user held up for unwanted attention, the move does make sense from a business standpoint. Inactive users are not good for the bottom line.

We’ve focused mostly on Facebook in this post. We’ll go deeper tomorrow on some of the potential changes for business and marketing over the next six months.