The most charitable reading I can give it still has it missing the point and not understanding what it is that's being built up with all these companies. Faceb

The most charitable reading I can give it still has it missing the point and not understanding what it is that's being built up with all these companies. Facebook, as I've said, restores and maintains social connections. This is absolutely not a minor thing, it's life-altering. Perhaps it's too early on in the process to understand that, but 10 or 20 years from now, everyone will get it when they look at who has been around and what they've shared as experiences. Twitter is the global hive-mind. It tracks what everyone in the world is thinking about, or at least it or its successor will when extends its reach that far. Yes, most of that is shallow, because most of what most of us think about is shallow. Duh. That's sort of by definition if you think that through for five minutes. If we were all deeper, then the norm would be redefined and we'd all seem shallow again. Twitter succeeds at capturing the hive-mind specifically because it is so short. Your immediate thoughts are immediate, they're bite sized. The format matches the format of your thinking. There's value in knowing what people are thinking, though of course that value will be applied in different ways. Foursquare is a few things. One, it's designed as a universal customer loyalty system on its primary level. I suppose if you think commerce is of necessity shallow, you can dismiss this as meaningless. Of course, it does give the small niche businesses a tool to level the playing field, but even that's probably not enough for some. But what about this- it's also restoring a sense of place to urban and suburban environments. There's a trackable history of who was where and when. It's not as disjointed as it was, there's a throughline. "Oh", you might say, "Bob goes to the same coffee shop I do, but three hours later". Now you're closer to Bob, and the coffee shop has more history for you. Yeah, ok, none of this is curing cancer, but it does matter, it does make a difference, and it does improve people's lives. You can tell me it's meaningless, but you're wrong.