Like it or not, FB is ubiquitous for many. People will use it to make important announcements. "What do you mean you didn't know I was engaged? I announced it on Facebook!" The counter is that it's rude to assume everyone is on Facebook. The same, however, can be said of email or SMS.

"your family's news and personality emissions are quite literally priceless for many, many, many people. Most, even."

I wouldn't go that far. Its the technological equivalent of being shown an absolute flood of your aunt's cousin's brother's kid's meaningless crayon scrawls on construction paper and feeling socially obligated to click the like button, err, I mean pat them on the head and say that's very nice art, junior. I know very well what the "socially correct" action is, but its certainly of no actual interest to me, and frankly I'm enough of my own man to be strong enough to ignore it.

That's why most people who quit sound wishy washy in person about it, however brave they sound on the net, in order to keep the peace. Um, well, I had to quit facebook because err, ah, its blocked at work, or I used up my phone data plan or it crashes on my phone too much or whatever. Not the truth, that its really boring and I've got better ways to waste my time.

Yeah, I think once a tech product becomes entrenched enough that your grandma tries to use it on a fairly consistent basis, you've hit a "point of no return" for market share. Something eventually stabilizes as a long-term de-facto standard, and Facebook is that now for social networking. imo it's going to be difficult to break FB's grip on traditional social media uses. Before DOS/Windows became the king, there was a lot of flux in the OS/computing market, very analogous to the bi-yearly transition to a new dominating social platform.

Facebook is becoming less and less cool as more and more grandmas get accounts, but I think at the same time it's becoming harder and harder to obsolete.

Maybe I'm wrong and it will soon just be used mostly by persons of limited technical literacy while the more involved people switch to a shinier alternative. I often compare Facebook to Windows, but there's quite a different barrier to switching an OS and switching a social media site.