I'd say Facebook is more like the front of your fridge (cool pictures of your friends/kids), plus your kitchen notice board (that wedding invitation from last year, that save the date card for next year etc) - the shoebox that you put all that stuff in, and never really sort, plus the photo album ;-)
I know plenty of people with really interesting things pinned to their fridge. It often takes them a while to remember anything about pictures that have been staring them in the face for years. Why? Because, you go the the fridge to get food. People are terrible multitasking which is why Facebook advertising has such a low click-though rate and a high accidental click rate.
Hungry. Get food. How much thinking is involved in that?
Do you know what has a very high clickthrough rate on FB, probably their highest CTR ever (but which is no longer allowed)?
Pop-up styled ads for "party poker".
Not much has changed since the 1990's in this regard. Web advertising is still much the same. And anyone who has been using the web since then, such as the author of the MIT article, sees and knows this.
But do the kids with advanced degrees being hired by FB at $100K/yr know it? Nope. They believe that watching your every move and analysing who your friends are is a path to riches.
I'm not sure what's worse. The knee-jerk response of web users to blinking poker ads, or the blind allegiance of otherwise intelligent young people to a sociopath who thinks destroying privacy is a "goal" worth pursuing.
News flash: Communication on and above the scale of FB is possible without destroying privacy.
OK, so if your wife says to you, e.g., "Swannie, we need [description of rarely purchased, high priced product]. The old one has stopped working." Do you check the front of the fridge, your kitchem notice board, the shoebox and then your photo album to find the contact information for who sells [product description]? Maybe you have the name of who to contact in one of those places? Or you need to call your friend to get a recommendation? Anything is possible, but what do you think is what people do _most of the time_?
FB is the next Pets.com
But it's going to be a slow, painful decline. They have raised billions to stay alive.
Solution for FB: Build a search engine and put it where the display ads are. Keep people inside the walled garden by removing any possible reason for them to leave. Like 1990's "framing" reborn. FAIL.
The whole notion of FB is utterly absurd. Tell us who all your friends are and we'll "enable" you to communicate with them (even though it's trivial to do yourself without us). We reserve the right to analyse all the information you give us and monitor everything you do on the FB site and elsewhere on the web to _try_ to make money, in various sneaky, deceptive (but really clever!) ways. FAIL.
