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Comment by psbp | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that facebook has achieved this sweet spot of harvesting personalized ad dollars while providing so little utility.

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So little utility defined how? I'm hard pressed to believe that a site almost a billion monthly uniques isn't providing utility to any of them. Or are you just on your latest "holier than thou" act and need to tell the world that you don't like facebook? Then congratulations for not liking facebook.

The amount and conviction of users doesn't imply usefulness. There are pretty obvious examples of this.

I don't dislike Facebook. I'm just amazed that their bargain is so lucrative. I don't think it will be best for consumers or the industry, but that's not really Facebook's responsibility. Is it?

Would you share some of the "pretty obvious" examples?

Not everyone is a genius and the fact that I can't figure it out, actually makes me feel insulted by your comment. The tone is just obnoxious!

>I don't think it will be best for consumers or the industry

Now again, do you think this because you don't like and/or use facebook, or do you have data to back this up?

Facebook and the iPad are in at least one way the two most useful and amazing tech products I've ever encountered. My mom never "got" computers despite having a house full of techies to help her. She got an iPad and Facebook and without even so much as asking me or my brother how to do something, is now e-mailing, texting, and sharing videos and videos of my daughter with her other grandparents. It's been a total and utter game-changer.

Other than Google search and maps, Facebook is the most useful service I use on the web.

How does sharing digital content with people you know qualify as 'little utility'?

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