Although I was an early(ish) adopter of both Twitter (member since 5/9/08) and Foursquare (member since 2/20/10), I was definitely late to the game for Facebook (member since 8/13/07). I was still clinging to Myspace (member since 8/30/05) and didn't have a .edu email address when it started to take off in 2004 because that was the year I graduated college. While those others have fallen to the wayside, FB still seems worth being a part of. I've been thinking about why that is.
I don't twitter/tweet much because it's so overwhelming and I don't know how to filter, keep up with or stand out in the constant stream of 140 character outbursts. Foursquare just started to feel weird because people I didn't know from Adam were requesting to follow me. Of course you get to deny their request if you want, but it creeped me out that strangers could pinpoint my location even if they wouldn't know my last name unless I friended them. Myspace just became a dinosaur, good for music but not much else. It's clunky and busy compared to the streamlined interface of FB, which just feels more grown up overall.
Why do I still FB though? Because it's easy and everybody's doing it.
Some hip co-workers at the ad agency I work for (yes, so that means they're ultra hip) convinced me FB was the wave of the future. I like waves, so I drank the Kool-Aid and jumped on. I made my profile very cut & dry (it still basically is, untouched since I made it), thinking even though FB was started out by and for college students, that it was going to become the next big career networking tool for adults...and then someone gave me an egg that hatched into a rabbit.
Soon after a bumper sticker that said "Cowboys butts drive me nuts" followed. Around the time I got a virtual frosty mug of beer on my birthday, I finally realized that for my set/demographic/peeps FB was also a place for adults to act like college kids. That's why I (personally) log into it much more than an actual career networking site like LinkedIn (member since 11/27/07). FB is a big party that people I know from work, that bar I went to last weekend, the Reel Big Fish show, my high-school job, my best friend's brother's wedding, etc. drift in and out of.
So while I started this on Day 1 by acknowledging the global relevance, my opinion also is that the real success of FB is that it has figured out how to hook people all over the map (literally and figuratively) by being able to serve a range of needs: platform for issues, disseminator of information, connector/collector of friendly faces, source of cats to stalk.
Yes, it's a great tool and many important things have been accomplished through FB...but let's not forget-- it's also the place that gave us Farmville.
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