Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut? - Jon Evans

I dislike Facebook because they’re mediocre. They have a platform and opportunity unlike anyone else, ever—and what have they done with it? Nothing. None of their so-called innovations are actually even remotely so. Copying Twitter was smart, but hardly new; ditto Foursquare. They called Facebook Groups an innovation; it’s a basic feature they should have implemented years ago. Now they’re laughably trying to claim that integrating email into their messaging system is a world-shaking revolution.

As usual, William Gibson put it best: “Facebook feels like a mall. Twitter feels like the street.” (Which I suppose makes Zynga the mall’s arcade.) It’s one thing to shop there occasionally, but quite another to be a full-fledged mallrat—and according to the stats, that’s what we have collectively become. I want to believe that eventually we’ll wake up, and grow up, and realize that new and interesting things mostly happen elsewhere.

And so, I speculate hopefully: what if Facebook is the new LiveJournal?

I think Facebook is the new AOL.