Exactly right. Very few people want the hassle of running their own email server. It happens I am the kind of person that likes running his own email server.

Exactly right. Very few people want the hassle of running their own email server. It happens I am the kind of person that likes running his own email server. I run my mail server in such a way that it is appealing to many of my friends to host their email accounts with me. Many other people find their accounts with gmail, or their ISP or their business. These are ALL examples of the success of our decentralized email system. Individuals, small businesses, and large business can all enter the market, offer advantageous features, compete on price, etc. Facebook is the opposite of this. I have no option to build my own site for facebook style networking. I have no option to subscribe to Google's implementation of a general social networking protocol.