Because Facebook has chosen to emphasize growth over monetization these past few years, they have de-prioritized close, meaningful connections over broadly relevant ones with a larger group of friends. While this will help them get to a billion users faster, and increase their share of brand spend on advertising (where Facebook is really killing it these days), it may create vulnerability to another social network player who focuses on a more tightly-defined social graph with only a few, specific & meaningful Intimate relationships.
I’ve had a similar opinion for a long time. Since the good ole’ days of “college-only” Facebook, I’ve missed the intimacy of sharing personal information with close friends and logging on to find out where the happening spots are in town. The whole point of Facebook was exclusivity and personal connections that mapped to the real-life social graph. I spend very little time on Facebook these days; I’m waiting for the next big-thing that will let me once again enrich my real social network via the web. Context is king, strength of connections is non-linear, and intimacy is exclusivity. Zuck has moved on, but hopefully someone else will relight the torch.
