"Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us this in response to our 'why' question:
Sharing is at the core of our product. Finding people you know, learning about people you don't know, searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you can generally only happen when people are open and choose to share. By recommending more open defaults, more people will be able to connect on the site.
Is that really true? Facebook is about learning about people you don't know and searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you? Far more often, we've heard the saying 'Facebook is about people you know, Twitter is about people you want to know and MySpace is about people you used to know.'
It is interesting that Facebook started off as a private space, controlled and limited, and that now it wants to become a more open space. Of course, it could be that Facebook wants to use this openness to sell users things, to convert the space into a market where interactions are less and less a the user's control. It is like the developments of urbanization, except in reverse. It may create some benefits as well as some irritations.
