I view it this way as well. There is a tipping point, a critical mass, where everything after will be viewed in terms of this dominant product/organization. G

I view it this way as well. There is a tipping point, a critical mass, where everything after will be viewed in terms of this dominant product/organization. Google, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Windows... all of these things conquered their respective markets in such a massive way that every direct competitor is playing catch-up or giving up on reaching the same goals. MySpace, like pre-Google search sites, was an obvious stepping stone on the path of social networking applications' evolution. It was terribly bad at almost everything and succeeded for a time purely due to demand for something of its general taxonomy. Facebook, however, is a very thoughtfully realized effort that is largely an agreeable experience for users. As long as they continue to avoid introducing negative changes slowly and with minimal exposure to users, those users will continue to stick around and bring in others. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog] And the big problem, one that I haven't seen addressed yet, is where people should go when they leave Facebook. There is no comparably-featured competitor, nor one even close. And of course, social networking applications are worthless without the people you want to interact with using them with you.