Maybe because not everyone lives 10 minutes from each other and is 100% independently mobile? And gee... occasionally even people that you really enjoy spending time with have to move to other areas of the planet.

As much as I'm not a fan of FB re all the privacy stuff (not to mention a history of horribly under/wrongly-documented and semi-broken APIs), it's done wonders for a large generation of web users in terms of allowing them to easily (and consistently) share their lives with a lot of their friends and family. I see that aspect as a good thing.

I have no car, a lot of my friends are several hours away by public transport (even here in San Francisco), my birth family lives on another continent, and my wife's extended family lives on a different continent again. I couldn't manage without the internet, but somehow I manage just fine without facebook. I've kept a FB as a sort of notebook in case I need to find someone, but I think I've only logged in once or twice this year. At this point, I think everyone I care about is on LinkedIn.

I'm not for or against FB; it's not my cup of tea, but I might not be like the typical user. What I don't understand is the 'forced to use facebook' meme that comes up every time someone is unhappy with some changes there.

People could easily share lives with their friends and families long before Facebook. Email, IM etc. But not a whole lot of people seemed to bother with it. Now Facebook brainwashed everyone that it's almost irresponsible not to share.

As much as I want to agree with that, no, it wasn't as easy.

If I wanted to share a picture with 12 people, I had to send 12 emails, or CC 12 people, or BCC them because they didn't want their emails shared with people they didn't know.

Not everyone understood IM, and not everyone was on at the same time.

The bigger question would be why more people didn't latch on to friendster or myspace before facebook. It's as much a social trend as much as a technical one. As computers got cheaper and more people got net connections (or faster ones), there was more of a need/demand for sharing info. Facebook hit at the right time to capitalize on network effects amongst 'regular' folk.

Alternate explanation: Facebook made it much easier to do things which were once possible, but hard. So more people do them more often.

Facebook is not the only and surely not the first easy-to-share service. Why are we so focused on Facebook today? Marketing.

No, because the people you know are there and use it.

I'm self-aware enough to know that if I weren't single, I wouldn't use facebook at all. As with many things in life, facebook is attractive to women, and the men follow the women.

I think it's why facebook really rules. It's the most casual place to ask a girl for a cup of coffee. If you sms it's a lot closer to harassing. And you can assume that you find practically any girl on facebook that you have met.

Why use Facebook and not OKCupid?

Facebook is 55% women. Dating sites are...not.

There are naughtier pictures on Facebook.

The people I know that get the most utility out of Facebook, are attempting to keep in contact with a large base of friends/family once they've move away from them.

This has always seemed so "burger without the meat" to me.

Unless your friends are conveying intellectual stimulation that stands on its own, you're just reminiscing and should probably just some make new friends and call your mom now and then.