[johnjlocke]

If the goal of Facebook is to collect a lot of users and advertising revenue, then sure it's a success. Just not as much as was forecast on the day of its IPO.

As a an actual social network, where friend go to exchange information with their other close friends, it jumped the shark some time ago. The EdgeRank algorithm helped to render a lot of online communication dead. When part of the goal is to keep people on your site in order to pitch advertising, that's not a good sign.

I've been thinking for a while now that the whole vibe around Facebook feels exactly like MySpace did about 4-5 years ago. The only thing preventing its demise is the lack of anything else that resembles it that everyone can latch onto.

Twitter has more of an information sharing vibe,and many people don't jibe with it. Many people dismiss Pinterest or don't get that either. Tumblr up until a week ago really felt like LiveJournal did back in the day, but I don't have a ton of high hopes for it lasting the next few years.

I find it ironic that having capitalized on the mistakes of the social networks that preceded it, Facebook is on the verge of repeating many of those same errors.