[aprendo]

Is it really so hard to see the real value a service like Facebook provides? I’m personally not a fan of Facebook (but found it to be tremendously useful for quite a few things in the past) but I know several people who find it very useful. At its worst it’s a silly diversion (ála Reddit or Hacker News, though certainly not worse than those), at its best it’s a rich communication infrastructure tailor-made for certain kinds of relationships.

Social networks are here to stay. They fix many of the shortcomings of older ways of communicating. Facebook has shown that it’s possible to make money with that. Their current numbers are most certainly not an invalidation of the business model or service, it’s more that they might have wanted too much.

Social networks are a sound idea. Facebook has a competent implementation of a social network. Maybe it’s not enough to rule the world – but I think it’s enough to make some money and be a healthy business (though Facebook seems to want more).