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The problem is that Facebook isn't good at anything other than being a social network, and it's not even amazingly good at that in the same way that Google was amazingly good at search or the original Macintosh was amazingly good at being a personal computer.

There is no other way at the moment to use the internet to do the things I mentioned above.

My friends prefer evite for organizing things. It uses email, there's a thin layer of privacy, and you have a space to include details and RSVPs and such. It's not great, but it's less complicated than Facebook and you don't have to be a member of the site for it to work.

You can't google for "what should I do friday night" but you can use facebook to find out what people you know might be doing.

I like yelp for help with the question "what should I do friday night." It's a social network where members actually create useful content for anyone to use.

Also you can Google for what bar/restaurant to go to. Or movie show times/reviews. Or how to get there.

People want to know what their friends are doing. That information really has nothing to do with it. It's about coordinating events among social groups, and Facebook is especially powerful at doing that among people who aren't very familiar with each other but have talked long enough to click "Add to Friends."

I don't find it to be especially powerful for that.

This was what was in my Facebook feed just now, at 4:20pm on a Saturday:

6 "has joined the group..." or "has become a fan of..." messages

5 miscellaneous profile updates (added photos, became friends, etc)

4 facebook spam (a facebook ad for facebook ads, "Top Books in Boston, MA network" etc)

1 application message (somebody added a "bumper sticker")

My theory is that, since it's the first beautiful Saturday we've had this year people are outside enjoying the weather without bothering to update facebook beforehand. There are probably people going out somewhere tonight, but haven't decided yet and aren't using facebook to figure things out because text messages are way more reliable when everyone is scattered around actually doing things.

It's not so much for quick get-togethers, but large scale events that would otherwise be impossible or very difficult to coordinate.

Also, you can customize the frequency of different kinds of items on your news feed.

"facebook friends" != real friends

I don't know when/why this became reality. On my facebook account, I only have people I know pretty well, many of them lifelong friends. It keeps my list short (Something like 40 I think) but it doesn't crowd it up. I guess that's not the norm

I think the norm is to descend into a competition with others about who can get the most 'friends'.

I expect the average facebook probably has a few hundred 'friends'. Which makes the whole thing a little bit pointless.

I think Matt's point wasn't that facebook was worthless, just that it's nothing special.

There are definitely services besides facebook that will let you do all of the things you mentioned (looking up a birthday, pictures from the bar, contacting a friend of a friend). In fact, you can do those things on pretty much every social networking site. Facebook just happens to be the popular one right now.

When it first became popular, Google was a one of a kind. The other search engines have since caught up, but initially they didn't even compare. I think that's what makes a website really special, and that's kind of what I think facebook is lacking. There's nothing inherently special about fb other than the large number of people that use it.

The serious question is if it can be replaced not if its currently popular.

there are already so many social networks, so facebook is not dominant where as Google has penetrated globally due to its quality.

I'd say that for most people on facebook, it's easier to replace google than to replace facebook. You can always use Yahoo or MSN for search, they might not be as good, but they're good enough. You can use Yahoo maps or Live Earth. And you can use Yahoo email, which is getting really good recently. But it's hard to leave facebook unless all your friends leave with you at the same time to a new social network.

that's an interesting perspective, but I don't think is really valid. People will easily/hardly change their default social network but really easier than switching from Google which is a point of reference to those who are used to it. Even if you tried to switch from Google, how many are the alternatives? Like you said only two. And whenever I tried them they never make me stick to them.

And this is easier to happen because more people can build a community than a search engine.

I disagree. As months go by, it's going to be even harder for anyone to come up with a social network as big as FB. Why ? FB's critical mass! As it's been said, all that differentiates Facebook for an individual user is the presence of that users friend’s on Facebook — which forces them to use Facebook to connect with them. And this is precisely why FB is not a founding member of the OpenSocial foundation. Facebook is threatened by OpenSocial’s ultimate aim of connecting user profiles and enabling users to easily manage and port their data across any social network.

Not to mention that in this country, it's still not even the most popular social network. And even if it becomes that, it did so only because it replaced MySpace. I don't see what is any more irreplaceable about Facebook than MySpace.

Facebook is different from MySpace for exactly the use case of keeping up with your friends. Facebook is the only social network so far that rigorously enforces real names, identities and relationships through both social design and brute force. MySpace has degenerated in to a social game to rack up more points in the form of 'friends'. They are completely different, which is why Facebook is catching up to MySpace so quickly and MySpace is sinking.

v important: "real names, identities and relationships"

Right, this is the "aha" one of the parents mentioned. The major problem with the internet is the lack of accountability, accountability is necessary to form trust, and trust is necessary to form good social networks.

> I don't see what is any more irreplaceable about Facebook than MySpace.

That's exactly it. You're probably not seeing how they're different. When you used Google you saw that it's different from Yahoo, but I'm sure many people didn't see the difference. After all, they're both search engines. Same here: although they're both social networks, Facebook is very different from MySpace. When I used Facebook the first time, I got that Aha moment you talked about.

still you don't answer if is irreplaceable and why

I thought I did in the first comment. It's hard to get all your friends to move with you at the same time to a new social network. Not that it can't happen, everything is replacable. It's just much harder than replacing google, because with Google I can switch on my own.

I'd argue that Facebook has the best 'quality' when compared to the other social networks in the USA. The UI and feature set are much better than any of its competitors. Facebook is dominant in the USA; the only competitor is MySpace which seems to fill a different niche.

Facebook = keep tabs on people you know, or sorta know.

MySpace = meet random people you don't know, get spammed by porn bots, irritate your ex by posting salacious photos of yourself with a new fling, browse photos of potential mates in a criminally inappropriate age bracket from yourself, etc.

Whether Facebook can be replaced is an interesting question.

I'm leaning towards "no". For any site to replace Facebook it would require either many, many users to make the transition to another site or to outright leave making the site less useful for its users, and I honestly don't see that happening. Facebook is honestly nicely designed, has plenty of users and I can't see any killer app or nicer equivalent of Facebook appearing to make moving worthwhile.

The only thing that could replace Facebook is an unprecedented sharing of data between many significant players allowing interoperability between sites much like how E-Mail works. The existence of DataPortability may be a slow but sure approach towards this goal but there's too many factors to consider influencing whether this will ever actually happen. I certainly hope so in the long run - one site having the amount of influence that Facebook potentially can worries me.

Disclaimer: I don't actually use Facebook, and probably never will.

Unprecedented sharing of data is starting to happen, and friendfeed is setting itself up as the hub of that sharing.

People are extremely fickle. A few years ago in the UK, everyone was on friendsreunited. Then they all moved to facebook/myspace. If there's a new thing with some cool feature, they'll all move to that. Facebook is just the current fad.

It will continue to be very relevant for college campuses for a good while yet.

How facebook will be replaced.

http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-opensocial-and-...

http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transit...

"most people"

I would amend that to "some people". Just seems like "most people" to you.

Even if 50 million Americans are on Facebook, then what are the other 250 million doing?

150 million are slightly too old to understand it, internet illiterate, or poor. And the other 100 million are too young, or haven't graduated from MySpace yet.

"too old," "internet illiterate," "poor" "haven't graduated from MySpace yet"

i don't think you much understand people nor do you understand the internet either.

Do you understand the demographics of the American people and of MySpace?

Yeah, Facebook is the wine & cocktail crowd while MySpace is the beer & more beer crowd.

laughable considering the strength of Facebook has been it's college-aged crowd who post hundreds of thousands of pictures from "beer & more beer" events

I meant it more as an analogy, in the sense that the MySpace crowd is generally happy with what they've got, and don't feel much incentive to switch to Facebook.

your insinuating that one who uses MySpace will ever "graduate" to Facebook as if it were a step up.

Show me a fan who connected with a musician on Facebook the way they connect with on MySpace. MySpace is a lot more content/entertainment oriented (as it has been since its origin) while Facebook was always more about connecting with friends and messaging.

I don't fall into any of the groups your stereotyping; however, I do find them extremely offensive and ignorant, as if a Facebook user were a super elite.

In fact, that would only reinforce the point that it's just not for everybody.

Shockingly, I have never met a passionate MySpace user before. I'm glad there are people like you out there. It adds balance.

MySpace is generally considered to be a poorly designed, unkept "social network" while Facebook is generally considered to be a clean, open, and sophisticated networking application. There is a very clear, highly researched demographic divide between the younger generation (middle/high school) using myspace and older, more sophisticated generation using Facebook. There is also a clear point of transfer, High School => College, where many people "graduate" to Facebook. It's a progression. (There are studies saying that MySpace also caters to the "older" population >30yo, but those are not the people I am considering.)

Facebook is not for everybody. I highly doubt the "too old" population I stereotyped will ever use Facebook. But as time goes on, I can see people in my generation (early twenties) replacing the "too old" generation while still using things like Facebook, so that huge market will slowly be absorbed.

There will always be a MySpace. It's amazingly good for connecting artists, like you mentioned. But it's still a shitty, poorly run, poorly designed, and non-user-centric organization. I wish Virb would have taken over.

I'm not a passionate MySpace user -- I don't even have an account, and I would agree that it's poorly designed, and the UI's not so great.

But it is what it is -- just because I'm not a passionate MySpace user, although you of course made that great assumption, does not mean it does not provide value for those who use it.

Again, your assuming people use MySpace and Facebook for exactly the same purposes, which in fact, many do not.

You can go on and on about how Facebook is for the great sophisticated people in their early twenties, and again, it shows you don't understand how and who uses the internet.

Show me the app you've designed that has amazing UI and also has 100 million users.

Keep ranting and raving about why Facebook > MySpace and you're still failing to miss the point: while they are both "social networks" their uses, which at times competing, are generally completely different.

Clearly you group yourself in this "sophisticated" category, and for someone as myself that has claimed for a couple years Facebook is a lot better than MySpace, I can see why that would comfort you to think of it that way.

Millions of MySpace users are often times just different than the millions of Facebook users.

Accept it.

> while Facebook is generally considered to be a clean, open, and sophisticated networking application.

And then they implemented Facebook Apps.

Lesson to startup founders out there. If your website is blessedly devoid of spam, don't create it yourself. It really pushes your users away.

"Shockingly, I have never met a passionate MySpace user before."

Then you, my friend, have never met a teenager.

I'd say if you're looking at the users that 'graduate' from one you the other, you might consider the people who graduate from Facebook to not wasting time on social networking sites because they're busy working and raising a family.

I didn't mean that Facebook itself was more important to "most people." I meant that friendships and socializing in general are close to the top of the list of what most people consider important in life. Thus an online tool that helps people stay in touch with their friends and socialize is perceived as being very important, even though it seems like a trivial thing.

I don't see that experience on facebook though. Email/IM/IRC/blog+forum comments - those help me to keep in touch.

Facebook just spams me with invites and stupid boring status updates. It's like a very very bad webmail system with a shared address book.

Got it. I misinterpreted. I agree.