"I use Facebook, but only as a means to keep in contact with people whom I wouldn't keep in my phonebook. It serves as a nice mediator."

I think this is a sentiment of many people either actively or passively; most people have far more "friends" on Facebook than they would truly consider friends. It's more of a place for acquaintances than a place for true friends / people you keep in contact with on a regular basis.

It is for this very reason that I maintain that the "killer app" (if there is/can be one) for "web 2.0" is not going to be a social network like Facebook, but something that enhances e-mail to include these popular social network functions (or an app that uses who your correspond with via e-mail as an indication of who your actual friends are and keep you updated on _their_ affairs). My reasoning for this is the fact that, for most people, the relationships we really care about / keep up are still mostly maintained via e-mail more than anything. Sure, we can write on our friends' FB accounts or carry on twitter conversations or us IM, but how many friends do you have that you don't e-mail?

E-mail was the killer app for the web to begin with and I don't think its on the way out like many people seem to. Its still the most prolific and convenient communication method for the web.

I would argue that my really close friends are people who I don't email much, but call instead. So your killer app would have to have access to my cell phone call history in addition to email history, and build the social network on a combination of calls and emails.

Right, I recognize that and agree that the top of the top is still phone calls, but as far as the web as a communication medium goes, e-mail is still the most used and most important.

Plus I couldn't immediately think of a non-intrusive way to collect call history from any phone so that idea was out ;-)

I've created a very effective way to keep family and old friends up to date on your doings when life gets busy (especially w kids) by letting digital photos create the chronology, and letting you send your doings by email in a mixed text/photo format whenever you find time to catch up. I hope you're right that solving this problem can be a killer app.

http://ourdoings.com/

"mindless young kids who join groups aimlessly, post pictures of the almost daily college parties, and find joy in spamming friends' walls" this is so condescending, how about just saying there are millions of people that enjoy facebook and use it a lot.

The reason I used that line is because that's the differentiating point between why a community like the one here doesn't see the value in Facebook, and why millions of kids do. Sure, Facebook serves other valuable purposes like the one it serves me, but where Myspace and Facebook get their click intensive users are from mindless kids.

You can't just say millions of people enjoy it, because within that group, there are many varying segments that play varying degrees of significance in contributing to why Facebook is successful. And the mindless groups of kids who join groups aimlessly, having that show up on their news feed, and having their friends join, ultimately creating this huge domino effect of clicks, is probably what contributes the most.