>So why doesn't someone simple replace Facebook with an "internet phonebook" that allows you to easily lookup Because it's hard to get people to enter that inf

>So why doesn't someone simple replace Facebook with an "internet phonebook" that allows you to easily lookup Because it's hard to get people to enter that information. In contrast, Harvard students in 2004 were highly motivated and that started everything off. From 2005 to 2008, the killer feature of Facebook was entering your real information when signing up and then Facebook showing all the real people in life that were connected to you. E.g... old high school friends finding each other again. Likewise, signing up for Facebook means you also wanted to "be found" by others. It was the first mainstream service to successfully accomplish this. Myspace didn't do it. Friendster tried but their webpage performance was too slow. >The other thing that drove adoption was the relative simplicity of publishing content. Most Facebook users do not "publish content". Most just follow their friends or read links passed on by friends (or the algorithm). [EDIT for clarity: I mean "publish content" the way that gp I replied to cited "blogs/personal websites"]