The only site bigger than Facebook right now is Google, and one can only imagine how big
that is.
I can't see how anyone is really that surprised with the Facebook phenomenon. It's had a few refinements since its launch, but generally the premise is the same: You float yourself out there, you connect with people, you interact. This is one of the biggest driving forces behind humanity: communication.
There is an entire subset of our technological development that has resulted from one thing: our curiosity and desire to communicate and interact in new and meaningful ways.
The development goes a little something like this:
- Spoken language
- Written language
- Messengers (on foot and on horseback)
- Homing pigeons
- Postal service
- Bound books
- Newspapers
- Photography
- Electric telegraphs
- Morse code
- The telephone
- Phonographs
- Gramophones
- Magnetic recordings
- Radio
- Television
- Fax machines
- Computers
- Cell phones (wireless devices)
- The Internet
Hmm..... and we have an entire thread on just one website on the very last item of this list.
It's interesting to note, however, that this last item has allowed us to communicate in
completely unprecedented ways. It is astounding how the Internet compares to every other item on that list (with the exception of language, of course). The Internet blows away virtually any other technology, so much so, that many of them have been rendered obsolete or relatively unused because of it.
For example, I use the Internet far more than fax, phone, television, radio, etc., combined. And I use the Internet for virtually all the same reasons why I would use those other things.
Despite all the privacy issues or issues of "lameness," Facebook is an enabler in terms of allowing people to communicate in ways they've never been able to before. It doesn't replace all communication, as real-life interaction has its place. But many people are more in touch now than they ever have been before, and much of that has to do with Facebook, or "social networking" in general.