Okay, so...

[hansandersen]

I have a Facebook. It links to other people. Other people link to it. At CES, every service and cell phone in the known universe announced integration with Facebook.

What does it *do*?

*Does* it do anything?

Does Metcalf's Law still apply if the networked endpoints have no actual functionality?

Comments

[gaaneden]

It's a social networking site that has hit on one big thing - it provides mini-games to keep people coming back to it. It provides easy, short status message set up for quick messages. It allows you to post notes (a la a blog), pictures (a la flickr) and links to interesting things. It is also mainstream enough that you may be surprised at who you find on there (or who finds you). Old high school/college friends. Finally, in a professional sense like me, it is a small PR place for people to promote themselves and their work.

[hansandersen]

Huh. So it's not a content site (LJ/Twitter/Flickr), its value is more as a resource? Sort of a personal PR database and announcement system, and the minimal interactivity elements are mainly intended to keep peoples' interest in the network so they keep their profiles up to date?

That's... wow. That might actually make sense.

[gaaneden]

Pretty much. You can link your LJ to it and crosspost automatically but it doesn't archive things easily except pictures.

[anthologie]

You can use it for personal content. "Notes" are common and used as mini-blog posts. You can also invite people to events, share links, post photos and tag other people in them (or other people can tag people in them). It also has a PM/email system.

One of the things that has been fun has been the massive number of grade school/high school classmates I've reconnected with -- we've all been digging through our closets for old photos and tagging each other in them, kicking off massive comment threads about our memories from that time.

[gmcnaughton]

For me it's all about status updates and photos. I never got into the minigames, though they're very popular. I like the convenience of looking at a single page to see an aggregate of what my extended network is up to. Keep up with all your friends at a glance! Like twitter but not as obnoxious.