> They were all doing more or less what Facebook was doing. What did Facebook do so right that they didn't? Oh god, this is so obvious! They were the first to

> They were all doing more or less what Facebook was doing. What did Facebook do so right that they didn't? Oh god, this is so obvious! They were the first to really hammer on the "use your real identity, as opposed to an avatar of some anime character or whatever" thing. That made FB a useful tool for connecting with people you already know which turned out to be a thing that billions of people wanted. That meant your mom or your dad could join Facebook and instantly have a social network. They didn't have to piece it together from scratch, and slowly piece it together with a bunch of bizarro internet avatar names like XXanimeloverXX or whatever that may or may not have corresponded to people they actually knew in real life. If you think about it, things like LJ and Xanga really were vestiges of "the early Internet" where the main attraction was "creating a virtual avatar" that could be very separate from your "meatspace" identity. Now, don't get me wrong! I actually really prefer that early internet and miss it dearly. But it's easy to see why it was utterly baffling to your mom or your Uncle Harry, and why Facebook's more straightforward identity model finally made social networking comprehensible and useful to regular folks -- you know, the 99% of people out there that didn't want the future to resemble Snow Crash.