They have an advertising model. People who organize political revolts log in and see Che's t-shirts for sale on the right side of the page.
Checking status automatically takes away some incentive from users from logging-on, there by less money for fb. Hence the shut-down.
Somebody else posted a project where they were going to create an app so that people could interact with fb through their email? If that takes off, expect it to be shut-down as well.
