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People had the same choice a decade ago, and chose against AOL.

I think Dvorak is simply pointing out the fact that Facebook is being praised like the second coming of Jesus, while AOL is regarded as an internet backwater and failure, where they both provide/provided very similar functions.

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One huge divide between people in the tech community and those outside of it is the meaning of free. Facebook's a walled garden to people who want APIs and generously licensed (or public domain) data, but, to most of everyone else, the only cost with Facebook is creating an account -- something many people want to do anyway for the other features of the site. This is in sharp contrast to AOL, which was very expensive and only offered its data to paid subscribers.

AOL's cost was money. Facebook's cost is your personal privacy. Yes, you don't have to shell out a dollar, but you lose all control over the information you associate with Facebook. In some ways, I'd rather pay real money.

Right, I'm not trying to make a claim either way about what the superior thing is; I'm just saying that your average person would rather get the service for free at the cost of their own privacy, which is one plausible explanation for the difference.

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