1. Facebook is pretty solid, and I think its openness is one of its major strengths. It does strengthen my existing friendships, and I've made some new friends on there as well. With the new apps coming out, it seems like the sky is the limit. The only thing I dislike about it is the design - it is very usable, which is priority #1, but otherwise so-so. I especially hate the offset-header thing they do, it makes me feel as if something is missing/broken. Many of the apps are counterintuitive or obnoxious. I hope people aren't getting mad at me for ignoring their zombie invitations.

2. There is a lot of weakness here, which seems odd considering the obviousness of the solution: I should be able to watch any TV show from any network I want, whenever I want. I should be able to pay 50 cents to get rid of the ads or something, or just run the ads outside of the shows entirely. In addition, when I go to a network site the landing page should be a video player playing whatever is being broadcast in my time zone at that moment. 1) Put TV on the internet. How hard can that be? 2) Make it random-access. 3) Have all the shows on there, past and present.

3. Online news is even weaker than online TV, if that's possible. I'd rather bathe in motor oil than read the comments on Digg or Newsvine. There does seem to be a correlation between how long a news site has been around and how badly it sucks. Could a million bored secretaries flaming randomly eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare? I don't know, but they're giving it their best shot.

I'm going to say something heretical here: social news is a lousy idea unless a narrow focus is maintained, like news.yc. I read news looking for insights that I as an average American cannot reach on my own. The commentary of millions of other average Americans adds NOTHING - in fact, it's a negative value proposition.

The solution, if you agree with me that news should provide insight, is exceptional reporting, top-notch writing, and a variety of ideological viewpoints. You aren't going to get that stuff from the internet masses.

That being said, I do like very focused social news sites like news.yc. Then again, you guys aren't a bunch of 'average Americans'.