[hasenj]

People don't come to facebook to post photos. The right thing to compare posting photos on facebook would be, maybe editing your user profile in stackoverflow.

Also, posting on stackoverflow requires you to be familiar with Markdown, an obscure markup language based on conventions used by geeks on mailing lists.

On facebook, the first thing you do is look at other people's posts and statuses. And that's incredibly easy; you don't even do anything, facebook just shows it to you.

[vindicated]

It's incredibly easy for you because you know how facebook works.

The first time I used facebook, I was like whaa? What's a WALL? What's the difference between a post and a note? How is sharing a link specifically different from embedding it in your status?

Lots of complexity there, but we learn it after a while.

[hasenj]

That's not my point.

People join facebook because all their friends are on it, and they get to see a news feed.

It's not instantly familiar or usable, and no one knows what's a wall or a news feed, but when you find pictures of a friend you haven't seen in 10 years, you'll probably stick around and try to figure it out.

Of course, at the beginning the only users where college students and people in their teens or twenties. But now even people in their forties join just because they can keep in touch with their distant relatives and old friends.