I agree with the way you describe the lock-in, of course that's the whole point of any closed network. But I disagree as far as the phenomena not being unique t

I agree with the way you describe the lock-in, of course that's the whole point of any closed network. But I disagree as far as the phenomena not being unique to Facebook. While grandma might have been on AOL, to her it was just the way to "use the internet" or whatever, she wasn't on any communities or groups or chat rooms. That required a slight uptick in the level of computer savvy one had to possess, which she never had or bothered to acquire. More to the point, her family wasn't on AOL, or wasn't interested in AOL, or if they were they couldn't interact the same way with her. Facebook's success is a combination of making things easy for people like grandma and attracting everyone related to her. Without those two pillars FB would be just another MySpace.