[scholia]

Agreed, and I'm not criticizing them for improving on one another's products.

Re Google Plus, however, circles don't actually do that (ie they don't work like Facebook groups). People have no idea which circle you have put them in.

Circles are also incredibly slow and clunky to the point where they become unusable for more than small numbers of followers.

It's not ridiculous to think that someone could do a better social network than Facebook, just as Facebook did a better social network than Friendster, Google Orkut and others that were around at the time.

You could say the same about Google Search, of course, or eBay, or Amazon. However, it's tough taking on properties with more than a billion users.