[mvanga]

I agree that social networks facilitate communication on an unprecedented level and scale. The problem I see is that the users of social networks have become the product, being sold to the advertisers, rather than the other way round.

I think the point that the parent was trying to make was that it was useful (and still is) up to a point where we actually got the benefits from it (like in the example you mentioned), but people seem to be realizing that the rest of the "features" of social networks are simply ways to extract more metadata out of a person.

There are some really novel applications that have been born from the social networking movement, but this seems to be a minority compared to the endless amount of trash that is coming out in parallel.