Eric Eldon has penned a surprisingly open-minded piece at Venture Beat about Facebook’s profile redesign. The piece is unusual in that it pops through the Silicon Valley bubble and asks one key question: What do users really want to do on social networks?

Eldon aptly draws the conclusion that users want to express themselves just as much as they want to efficiently digitize their off-line life. Developers have been making that claim, out of self-interest, for a while. It may be true. People don’t yet view Facebook as LinkedIn, and that means that social frivolity is a draw.

We won’t try to add to Eldon’s analysis. We will say this- Facebook’s profile redesign illustrates the growing gap between different social networks. Facebook’s redesign is an abrupt turn away from the bling-saturated world of MySpace. That type of differentiation will only continue.

For brands, it means taking unique approaches to each network, just as you’d run a different ad in “Time” than you would in “People.” Does the differentiation make things more confusing? Definitely. Does it make them more uncertain and exciting? The answer to that is “Definitely” as well.