Facebook really did and does fill a need that's been open for a very long time: a central communications/notification platform. It's been tried time and time again, with both open standards and closed standards, but Facebook is the one that caught on (very unfortunately).
For a few years I ran a successful business in my small-but-bustling town of using the Facebook Events API to pull in all the events in the area and putting them on a single calendar, then pushing those events back to my business's Facebook page before the event started. At that point everyone in town can either visit my website or follow my Facebook page, and now they have one central place to get all the town's news. I could never convince business owners to put all their events on my site directly, because "our audience is all on Facebook already" but people would have to follow a couple dozen pages and check them each individually (because Facebook won't show you everything you've followed).
Facebook eventually shut down that API (with no notice, against their own SLAs) and I kept scraping the data by hand because the residents and the businesses found it so useful. Then the pandemic hit and these small businesses had no money to pay me and they weren't holding events anymore anyway. But even after we're done with the pandemic I doubt I'll be picking it back up because Facebook is an abusive business partner to begin with, and the people you're then forced to interact with on Facebook are some of the worst and most toxic human beings I've ever met. I've had death threats from my own neighbors because an event I advertised was sold out. I've had Facebook followers stop me on the street and complain to me about taxes and zoning because they can't tell the difference between a news outlet and the city government.
But it really does highlight that Facebook is meeting a demand that nothing else, not email or RSS or SMS or anything has been able to meet. It's just a shame that they're the worst possible company to make a social network that you'd actually want to interact with.
For a few years I ran a successful business in my small-but-bustling town of using the Facebook Events API to pull in all the events in the area and putting them on a single calendar, then pushing those events back to my business's Facebook page before the event started. At that point everyone in town can either visit my website or follow my Facebook page, and now they have one central place to get all the town's news. I could never convince business owners to put all their events on my site directly, because "our audience is all on Facebook already" but people would have to follow a couple dozen pages and check them each individually (because Facebook won't show you everything you've followed).
Facebook eventually shut down that API (with no notice, against their own SLAs) and I kept scraping the data by hand because the residents and the businesses found it so useful. Then the pandemic hit and these small businesses had no money to pay me and they weren't holding events anymore anyway. But even after we're done with the pandemic I doubt I'll be picking it back up because Facebook is an abusive business partner to begin with, and the people you're then forced to interact with on Facebook are some of the worst and most toxic human beings I've ever met. I've had death threats from my own neighbors because an event I advertised was sold out. I've had Facebook followers stop me on the street and complain to me about taxes and zoning because they can't tell the difference between a news outlet and the city government.
But it really does highlight that Facebook is meeting a demand that nothing else, not email or RSS or SMS or anything has been able to meet. It's just a shame that they're the worst possible company to make a social network that you'd actually want to interact with.