Young people use it. They don't use email. I'm 21 and my friends are all roughly the same age. They have a university email account they use for school. They have a personal email account, which they set up almost 10 years ago, and only use to sign up to sites. It is filled with thousands of unread notifications, friend requests, and spam messages. They never check it.

The last time these people gave out their email address was in the early 2000's so I could add them on MSN. In the last 2 years anytime I meet someone new we don't exchange phone numbers or email addresses. They ask "Are you on Facebook?" and we connect there. This is becoming more and more common. I'm not saying that it is impossible to get by without Facebook just that it is more inconvenient. For me, giving up Facebook would have almost the same effect as giving up the telephone (for personal use).

Yes, that's the network effect. It's useful because it's used. It's a fact becuase it's a fact because it's a fact, etc. And it's not just young people either. Most of the people who force me to reluctantly use Facebook sometimes are actually older than me.

But I want to know if there is anything genuinely useful about the form of communication that is Facebook. I think there has to be something, or it wouldn't have become what it is.

Maybe it's that the default mode of communication is spam. Maybe it's that what is said on Facebook carries less weight and hence requires less effort to say. Maybe it's that statements need no reply there. Maybe it's like the village square where people hang out so they don't feel lonely even if they don't have anything to say.

I don't know what it really is. But us hackers should ask the question because it might tell us what to create in the future.

Stays up to date and you can't lose it.

That's true for email as well.

Everyone you know notifies you when they change their email address?

Yes they usually do, but most of the time that's not even necessary, because they simply start sending from a different email address and the first time I reply they are automatically entered into my address book.

If someone creates a new Facebook account or switches to G+, I'm not notified automatically either.