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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

and what of friendster and myspace? both of them had the same advantages.

Neither of those platforms had extensive application support for their external user account login (facebook connect). Furthermore, they did not have the social graph integration with other sites for features like instant personalization. Not to mention a user base of over 500 million people. They are apples and oranges, both fruits but different kinds.

one sentence that I think will eventually kill any social network that includes everyone:

My mom is on facebook.

Well, my mom already quit facebook.

Also, I have a relatively large family, many of whom are on Facebook. A year ago they were trying to use Facebook for family notices and communication. These days they've gone back to email. Everyone has email, but not everyone is on Facebook, not even among those who have already joined at one point.

As long as you can only do facebooking via Facebook, there will be people who aren't connected to it.

Yea but you don't have to friend her.

She's your mother - I mean, I guess you really don't have to friend her? but it seems pretty rude to me. I didn't mind friending my mom. the problem that I hit was that facebook broke the compartmentalization between my mother and my stepmother. I love them both, but, uh, let's not mention one in the other's presence, you know?

I mean, if facebook was providing me something meaningful I would have found a way to deal with it. But as it was I was mostly leaving my wall questions and my facebook mail unanswered; It really was better, I think, to leave rather than have people expect me to answer questions and then have those questions drowned out by mafiafarmcow updates and pictures of cute cats. (I know, you can filter some of the crap... but you know what? I already know how to use procmail. I already have a 200+ message a day email inbox, I don't need another.)

So the thing with my mom(s) was sort of the last straw. Everyone has my email; I went from mostly ignoring my facebook to deactivating it.

yes, but they entered the market at a point in time when the masses were not ready for social media. Myspace was for kids, friendster was for early adopters.

Eh... I don't know. I think there is actually a disadvantage to everyone being on the network. I left facebook when both my mother and my stepmother joined. I don't think I'm alone in this need to compartmentalize my personal life in ways that facebook doesn't support.

Now, my professional life, well, I'm on linkedin, and I like it quite a lot. But facebook has lost it's compartmentalization, and I think that's bad. It used to be just for college kids, which is a great niche, everyone else wants to be in the same place as the cool college kids. But if mom starts showing up at the local watering hole, I think the kids are going to find a new place to hang out.

The thing about linkedin is that yeah, I want to compartmentalize my professional life to some extent... but it's one way compartmentalization. I mean, while I don't really want all of my personal life to bleed into my professional life, I mean, my business partners and customers don't need to read about my relationship problems. Not that I'm ashamed of my personal life or anything; it's just unprofessional, and I think impolite to shove that in their faces. But the other way around is fine; I'm okay with casual friends reading up on what I do at work.

Really, the compartmentalization of my private life is very complex, and I'm not a very private person.

Just my opinion; I'm clearly not an expert at this sort of thing.

I'm in my 30s. My social group is mainly urban and mobile. It certainly seemed that vast majority of people around my age were on MySpace, and I say this as someone who never actually joined it with a real account. Incidentally, the same people who used MySpace heavily are the ones whose posts fill up my Facebook wall. In fact, most of those people were also on friendster.

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