[wickedbass]

> Nobody wants to go back through that process on an upstart network. Nobody has the energy or motivation.

I disagree. Firstly, you make it sound as if filling out some information about yourself (don't we do that all the time anyways?), posting some pictures, and updating your status is some overwhelming endeavor. For those of us old enough to have started on myspace and switched to facebook, it really was pretty seamless.

I'm not saying anyone should rush to develop the "next facebook", but I do think that the new entrants you speak of could easily become significant later on.

I agree that facebook seems pretty much stagnant when it comes to the user experience. I'm actually eager to see the new myspace once it debuts for that reason...

[hackinthebochs]

> Firstly, you make it sound as if filling out some information about yourself (don't we do that all the time anyways?), posting some pictures, and updating your status is some overwhelming endeavor.

But that's not what makes a social network. User profiles have existed since the beginning of the internet. A social network is a place to see and be seen. But this requires people--the more the better (usually). Facebook for better or worse, has already won this game.

I don't really get this idea of facebook being "stagnant". Perhaps they've already refined the concept of general social networking to its peak. It's an odd idea in SV that a site has to constantly roll out new "user experiences" to remain relevant. Facebook is a platform for attention-whoring. They do that just fine. The users themselves create the experiences.

[joonix]

Actually, they don't do that [attention whoring] just fine. They've actually severely diminished that experience with the new system that limits the exposure your updates get unless you buy a $7 promotion. This scheme is a disaster ... yes, charge Pages for it, but not regular individual users.

[hackinthebochs]

Why is it a disaster? As long as there is no feedback on how little exposure one's posts get, I don't see a downside to facebook with this. Being flooded with bad/uninteresting content was a real problem. Filtering one's stream was an important usability addition.

[wickedbass]

when you have to fall back to charging for relevant content, I think it's fair to say that your model is broken.

[toddmorey]

Well, I will say Google+ is pretty good, but for me it came too late. I already had social network fatigue and too much content already in facebook to do much useful with Google+ or to spend any real time with it. I kinda wish Google+ had come first.