> Fundamentally, Facebook is an identity directory. ...
> Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special.
Throw away your cynical world view for a second and just go to your Facebook feed and see how people are interacting there, having fun, supporting each other, spreading a little bit of love in form of "likes" (even if it's a bit silly) and come back and say it ain't anything special and it's just a solution to an identity directory problem. It's much more.
Facebook is the closest thing to a chat at a bar with your friends that internet has to offer. Certainly, there are better bars already out there, but FB is a bar that your friends are willing to come to. It's still early days of internet and our virtual existence, so FB ain't that colourful and deep as an evening at a local pub can be, but painting it just as a identity directory is a fundamental misunderstanding of social internet.
Maybe, but most of my physical-life friends friends won't come to IRC. As I said, there might be better bars, but FB is a good enough to socialize with people you want to see. And IRC can be downright nasty for uninitiated, it's like this awesome watering hole on outskirts of the town that reveals it's beauty only after repeated use.
I would say Google Hangouts emulates chatting in a bar more than any Facebook feature does. Facebook, for me at least, has become the service that I use as a messaging tool, a constantly-updated "social newspaper", and an online rolodex.
> Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special.
Throw away your cynical world view for a second and just go to your Facebook feed and see how people are interacting there, having fun, supporting each other, spreading a little bit of love in form of "likes" (even if it's a bit silly) and come back and say it ain't anything special and it's just a solution to an identity directory problem. It's much more.
Facebook is the closest thing to a chat at a bar with your friends that internet has to offer. Certainly, there are better bars already out there, but FB is a bar that your friends are willing to come to. It's still early days of internet and our virtual existence, so FB ain't that colourful and deep as an evening at a local pub can be, but painting it just as a identity directory is a fundamental misunderstanding of social internet.