Most of us spend our entire lives building our own personal brand.

We work long hours so to reflect our inner character and establish a reputation of worth. Often, we place ourselves in difficult situations, to prove our mental stamina and fortitude when faced with an adversary. We take our responsibility seriously and we make mistakes, spending years, sometimes decades cultivating friendships along the way. We, as people, often tackle more than we can handle in the hopes of becoming better and finding success.

Well, congratulations people. Thanks to all your hard work -- and we do salute you -- Facebook is a smashing success and has decided to go public this year.

Of course, achieving financial success on the backs of others in what is projected to be a legendary initial public offering does make one ask about possible downsides regarding the Facebook business model. Rather than discuss the money, which everybody loves, or answer questions regarding the 'true' value of Facebook, let's examine the recent filing submitted by Facebook along with other internal and external environmental factors that may imperil the longevity, financial health and/or business model utilized by the company.

Facebook: Crowdsourcing becomes Crowdleeching

When it comes to Mark Zuckerberg, it seems that only the Pharaohs of biblical old could have done a better job of using 'free' labor to build their empire. Figures presented by several major financial publications in the past 2 weeks estimate Zuckerberg will have an initial net worth between $24 and $28 billion dollars post-IPO. These same publications also project the company will be worth approximately $100 billion.

Ironically, the tangible success of Facebook is built upon an intangible but valuable asset: your life. Facebook, in a nutshell, owns the personal data of over 750 million individuals. Outside of Fort Meade, home of the NSA, there is probably no organization with as much verified personal data on file regarding US citizens.

Not only does it own this data into perpetuity, it mines this data every chance it gets to create information on people's buying habits, social circles, political preferences and ultimately what they share with friends and family. And the best part? They gave it all away willingly. The techniques used to collect and aggregate this data are presented in the name of 'community' and appear to be a legitimate variation of crowdsourcing. However, because of the duplicity of the management at Facebook, specifically Mark Zuckerberg, a more accurate term would be crowdleeching.

With Facebook's most recent changes, users' data is automatically viewable and searchable to the public, an idea that Zuckerberg vehemently opposed just two years ago, but now says that it is what users want. In an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington last week, he claimed that the obtrusive changes were due to "[Facebook's] role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are," essentially saying that people do not value privacy anymore. As most of us know, however, this is not a novel concept for our young hero to discuss what with the emails and instant messages that were unearthed from Facebook's early days, with Zuckerberg essentially offering to share 4,000 people's personal information with a Harvard buddy of his.

Wow, some people really have it coming.

At some point, because of Zuckerberg's personal beliefs -- which are now integrated into being 'best practices' within certain sectors of the business culture -- the monster he helped create will (if it hasn't already) violate more than a few state and/or federal laws regarding personal privacy. This includes laws as related to credit, health and financial information. If this were to happen, Zuckerberg could follow the example set by one of his Silicon Valley peers, Larry Page of Google who settled a federal lawsuit last year which prevented him and his company from being charged with criminal and civil penalties.

What's better is that it only cost a paltry $500 million to bury.

This temptation of other people's money and high visibility will mean that shortly after their successful public offering, Facebook will become a target for ambitious state and federal prosecutors. These prosecutors -- idealist crusaders, publicity seekers and/or fine chasers -- will begin to scrutinize the privacy practices of Facebook. In tandem, Zuckerberg's previous shortsighted statements (which will be used in civil hearings) will require Facebook (because of the hubris of executive management) to lawyer up and hire other unsavory agents of influence to respond legally and otherwise.

Facebook the Cartel: Hackers and a tie to Russian Gangsters?

Much to the dismay of lawyers across the United States, there are some issues an international business cannot manage in a court of law. While Facebook is no stranger to 'petty' lawsuits -- just ask the Winklevoss brothers -- they are, in their filing, a bit more honest about the threat that cyber criminals pose to their organization. However, they have also been just as creative in cutting deals that mitigate their risks -- at least until the IPO is approved.

Enter Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies. Facebook made a wise move to accept his investment of $200 million in 2009 because it in a nutshell prevented a lot of potential hacker attacks from the former eastern block and Russian communities. Now DST has a ten percent share of the company, making this scenario similar in a way to the movie Casino where the Italian mob provides some of the seed money to get the operation off the ground and makes it untouchable.

This has, more or less, been Facebook's hacker prevention strategy to this point in dealing with hackers from the former eastern block nations. Once everyone makes their money after the IPO, this so-called strategy will dissipate, and what cyber criminal could resist the identities of 750 million individuals and businesses centralized under a single platform?

Hey kids, ever heard of The Bell System Breakup?

Once, a long time ago, long before the Federal government took Microsoft to court on anti-trust charges -- and lost -- there was an evil communication monopoly called AT&T (aka The Bell System). AT&T and their lackey henchmen companies (called RBOCs or Regional Bell Operating Companies) oppressed the people and were wicked in their ways by overcharging for equipment and long distant charges.

The federal government appointed a special prosecutor -- who stood outside the political structure -- that had the power to break apart their hold on all the various touch-points within the communication infrastructure they owned. Over the period of a decade the prosecutor and his staff put rules in place that encouraged competition and broke the RBOCs' stranglehold on the telecommunications market. This lead to market innovation, better customer service, reduced pricing and more choices for consumers.

Facebook has a lot in common with AT&T prior to being divested. Should the US government -- at the encouragement of consumer protection groups and opponents of the company (Hollywood are you listening?) -- elect to scrutinize Facebook from the perspective of being a monopoly, the company will have no choice but to respond with a multi-billion dollar campaign to prevent this from happening.

Throw in actions by cyber criminals, rogue nation states, unscrupulous data mining companies and hackers with social and political agendas and Facebook becomes a company with a promising future fighting off civil lawsuits and using spin to control the damage that has and will be done. Finally, Facebook will begin to limit the impact of new disruptive technologies both through lawsuits of their own and by tightening their grip on the individuals who already utilize their service, making a switch to a competitor platform much more tedious and time-consuming and therefore undesirable.

The story of Facebook is going to be playing out in the popular media over the next year. The IPO, without a doubt, will be highly successful and make many hardworking individuals, oligarchs, venture capitalists and financial institutions very wealthy. Unfortunately, the risk created by this IPO means that while a financial feeding frenzy validates the existing business model, it does not speak to the ethics, morality and ulterior motives of all the actors in this drama. The calm before the storm is always pretty from a high vantage point, but for those on the beach, things can be downright scary.