John C. Dvorak recently blasted Facebook with his article The Ghetto Called Facebook. I agree with most of the article but disagree with notion that FB’s main competitor is Second Life due to the fact the two, while both social, are two completely different platforms; saying the two are direct competitors is a bit of a stretch.
I also disagree with the notion that Facebook is another AOL, because AOL’s rise was mainly due to guerilla-style marketing (you all remember those floppies and CDs that came in the mail), while Facebook’s userbase was built upon the idea of simple connectivity using true information instead of screen names. As such, AOL would have never turned into Facebook even if they kept their popularity because their way of gaining traffic is the polar opposite of Facebook.
What does ring true however is the idea that by and large, people do in fact prefer a spoon-fed internet experience.
To be more specific, people prefer centralization over decentralization. When there is a go-to place where people know they can connect to others, they will go there. It absolutely does not matter how unbelievably bad the privacy of personal information is handled in that central location. It absolutely does not matter if user’s souls are bought and sold as dehumanized commodities and nothing more just for a buck. It absolutely does not matter how clunky and wrong the experience is in that location. The people will go there and all jump off the cliff like lemmings.
Massively popular social web destinations are built for those with a seven-year-old’s mentality; they are made for people who don’t think and just merrily skip along under the assumption that their interests are being best served. Those who actually do think understand this obviously isn’t the case.
Am I saying that the target market for Facebook is stupid people? Yes. Don’t worry, I’m not calling you stupid if you use FB. Not at all. But you do know the system is primarily designed for those who barely know how to turn a computer on, much less use one.
You can fight Facebook’s stupid by going in to go out
Let’s say for the moment you have your own blog, web site or whatever and you’re having a very difficult time getting your friends/relatives/etc. out of the system to see your content. There are two wants to combat this:
1. Link out
You take a bunch of photos and want to show them, so you post to Flickr, Photobucket or whatever photo site you use. Post the link to the photo collection as a status update in FB so people can see them. They will click through and see your stuff.
2. Use a community page, link out
This is the same as #1 above but with the added advantage of having a 100% public Facebook presence that doesn’t show all your personal info to the world.
To create a page, go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/learn.php
Dave and I use community FB pages quite a bit. There’s one for PCMech, Dave’s page and my page.
Whether you choose to link out from your personal profile or opt to use a community page, this is how you get people to your other places on the web. Stupid people will see your links and say "Durr.. link on Facebook.. from a friend.. durr.. must be good!", and click.
Yes, I know, this is sad, but true. It does work. If someone doesn’t know how to click a link, then.. well.. there’s no hope for them at that point. 
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