For me it’s more an issue of the attitude of the creator of Facebook and some of his mis-dealings with uConnect. Do you really want to contribute to this guy’s bottom line when even he says that his own Facebook users are “dumb [expletive redacted]?”

The other issue is in the technology. We already had a social network, or graph, before Facebook and MySpace. It’s called the internet. You create a website. You could even use blogging software such as WordPress. If you want to publicly follow someone, you add his/her blog to your blog-roll. If want to privately follow someone, you can subscribe to their RSS feed. Private messages were handled using email. What’s wrong with that? Is it really too difficult? I’d argue that learning these things is no more difficult to relearning Facebook every 9-12 months when they change the rules and reset your privacy settings. Using these technologies *you* own *your* work. *You* choose *your* tools.

It seems to me that the herd has once again chosen the easy way over the correct way. Website creation and blogging tools are improving by the day, and I’ll argue that there’s really no need for a single, centralized clearinghouse to locate friends. If the web were used as I have described, then you should be able to locate your friends using Google, Yahoo or Dogpile.