I think it's completely the opposite. It's not bringing your friends to a new network that's the hard part - it's bringing your data (mainly photos). Getting thousands of photos out of Facebook that are nicely tagged and commented on and into another network is impossible. Getting the photos out is possible but it's a lot of work. Switching IM networks is much easier than switching social networks which have so much data we value stored in them.

Another problem is that teenagers are constantly meeting new people. The default is not to ask for a phone number but for an add on Facebook. If you aren't on it you aren't going to be able to keep in touch with and develop a friendship with this new person you've just met.

I'm constantly surprised that people actually care about the commenting part; tagging I can sort of see the value in, but only from the perspective that Facebook becomes your main photo library. Granted I'm not the most sentimental kind of chap, but once uploaded photos have been commented on, liked, +1'd etc, how many people really care about that sort of thing? Presumably people have copies of photos they care about or are deeply personal.

Of course, maybe this is the part of me that always goes "Oh yeah, I do that, and that, and..." when I go to seminars on Autism rearing its head. I'm also somewhat bemused by people's film-era photo albums for the most part, so I guess there's that.

s/possessions/data/

16-21 is like a personality black hole for most people. It's a time when you're super self-absorbed and you're living from moment to moment, literally changing every day. If I'm totally alone here then please ignore me, but once in a while I will run into a random picture of me when I was 17 or something and I can't help but think "who the fuck is this person".. and immediately want to bury that particular picture. Pictures with family are a different story, those I treasure immensely. But they are so few and far between, and certainly would not have been considered Facebook-worthy in my teens.

Couldnt disagree more. Teens are the most-dependent age group on fb's fake social interactions.

I am 32 and I could leave fb in a second. That is because I realize that im not being social by liking posts or commenting on photos or any of the other common flows. Thats not social! Plus there is not nearly the peer pressure at my age that there is for teenagers to do that type of stuff.

(i never used fb for photos though, which is a big lock-in. my comments are just regarding the social interactions)

If you're actually talking or communicating, via exchanges of comments or instant messages then I feel that's interaction.

this means that your non-tech savvy friends have an incentive to use it, just like the internet explorer.

"hey John, I want to chat with you over this internet thing"

John likes Jane and wants to talk to her but she is not comfortable with downloading and installing programs. She noticed that there is an app which name suggests that it is for messaging, she clicked the icon, answered the questions and created an account.

Now the tech savvy John has to create msn messenger account to talk to Jane. All the people missing from ICQ are on msn messenger now and those on ICQ can easily create a msn accout. At first both msn and ICQ run side by side but msn messenger has all the people from the ICQ while ICQ lacks many of the friends. Why bother to use ICQ? the starting sound is not good enough reason and the RAM is scarce resource for many. so, don't run ICQ all the time, only when you need it. Msn catches up with the features and people don't have reason to use ICQ anymore.

you can switch to some other network if you have somebody to interact there.

also, many hated ICQ. it had annoying spam, the messages you receive from people that are not on your list.

people can move away from facebook only if there emerges a network with a killer feature, builds up some core network of early adopters and the rest follows them because they know the people there.

I also think that it is relatively easy to find somebody's phone number once you do wish to call/text them. You can just ask a common friend or Facebook them from a throwaway.