[girlvinyl]

Facebook has demonstrated a completely utter disdain for interacting with their users. If something goes wrong with your "friend wall" or whatever, it's an inconvenience. If something goes wrong with your money, you want to talk to a human. Everyone knows you can't reach fb humans. When it's money, that matters. The work involved in turning that perception around is a huge hurdle to this idea.

[shmerl]

The whole approach of Facebook at its core is a disdain for the users, because Facebook profits from users' profiles. They can argue that users are willing to trade off their privacy for the "free" service, but it's just a sneaky way to get users information to monetize on. Given that, why do you think they should have more respect in other kind of interactions?

[girlvinyl]

There are lots of reasons they /should/ have more respect. But my whole point was that I don't think they ever /will/. Putting a high touch endeavor like financial dealings on top of a no touch venture like a social network is dumb. Basically, looks like you and I agree.

[shmerl]

Yes, we agree. Really Facebook is not fitting to be a social network, but at the same time it has such a huge number of users at the moment. Hopefully real social networks like Diaspora which are built for social interactions and not for ripping users off on their privacy, will eventually gain more traction.

[girlvinyl]

You inspired me to write a little blog post. http://www.sherrod.im/81/just-give-them-their-money/

[shmerl]

Commented there.