> This is the best-executed vendor lock-in I know.

Another good one is microsoft initially tying excel, word, access, etc to windows. And then IIS, SQL Server, etc to NT. An entire generation of businesses and managers got tied to windows this way.

In a way facebook and social media is a form of "vendor lock-in". The network/community itself and your "investment/time" in facebook makes it costly for many to move to another "facebook" or give up facebook altogether. The more time you spend on facebook and the more people you bring onto facebook, the more "locked-in" you are. It's quite ingenious and I suspect facebook understood this very early on.