The real question is: Is Mark Zuckenberg smarter than 10,000 angry nerds? He needs to be. The nerds are only screaming about privacy and more privacy. Facebook

The real question is: Is Mark Zuckenberg smarter than 10,000 angry nerds? He needs to be. The nerds are only screaming about privacy and more privacy. Facebook's main problem is many people use it to post trite, uninteresting crap. They use it to rage against the boss, gossip, do stupid things no one wants to know about. It's because the site is based on real life friendships, not because they heard it's private somewhere. The etiquette on Facebook is to talk to people you know through real life friends, but on other sites you can follow and talk with people who you find interesting. Sites like Twitter, Flickr, Github where connections are based on activities, interests, not personalities are in a better position. That type of content doesn't need to be private. That's where Facebook wants to be, but they have to fight the current perception of what Facebook is for to get there. I think a few UI changes could alleviate a lot of the problems. They need to have fully private messenging like Inbox and chat but which connects to more than one person at a time. Google Wave has a good UI for that part.