Perhaps over time communities like this will lead to a restoration of the "long tail" of online communities. I've found myself less than comforted by the homogenization of communities that can result on one-size-fits-all places like Facebook or Twitter.

> I don't think these alternate social networks will ever displace Facebook

I think they could. The facebook model rules out certain kinds of very common social interaction. There are certain things you only say or share when you're pretty sure of some privacy (or otherwise drunk). I would argue that there's definitely a need for a network that enables those kinds of interactions even if the demand isn't obvious yet.

That being said, I'm not sure "Christian Facebook" encourages or supports those use cases. I'd like to see more discretion-oriented (end-to-end encryption, read-receipts, retracting sent messages, etc.) features on a service that aims to serve Christian use cases.

Also, there are probably many nuances and facets of socialization that have yet to be created, discovered, exaggerated, detailed, organized, etc. Just because most people limit themselves to the physical world of body language, sensory percepts, the electronic-intellectual world of thumbs up, upvotes and personalized walls of media subtypes; that doesn't mean that's the end to socialization.

I think there is a lot of potential for creativity to be expressed, to come up with new ways to communicate.

The surrealists did automatic drawing with one another, and some folks at Google combined vast quantities of depersonalized data and individuated constructions of layered learning, to create surrealistic like images.

If it's just solitary use cases, then we are in agreement. Some social networks remove entire interactions away from typical hubs like Facebook, such as in South Korea, where couples' social networks are popular places to share the gooey romantic talk that would annoy anyone else.

But if you want to reconnect with old friends or announce that you just got a book published or something, you'll still probably post to Facebook.

I agree. Facebook as the new 'white pages' makes a lot of sense.

Then again, I could see facebook being disrupted by a family of special-purpose tools and sites the meet all the same needs. It happened to newspapers when classifieds, opinion pieces, sports news, and various other use cases each went to different internet sites.