Comments on: Facebook's portal for the masses

Facebook wants to be the center of its members' lives in the same way that MyYahoo became the home base for millions of users over the last decade.

[g15host]

This is dot-com boom-bust all over again. I wish everyone can use the same 'business model' these investors think of - "sure our food sucks, but if everyone just come into the restaurant anyway and, and, uh, socialize, I'm sure I can selll something to them... "
Seriously if you spend more time with online friends than with flesh and blood people, you deserver to hand your wallet over to Mark Z. Otherwise shut your computer down and get out more. Trust me, to be invited by people I know and then discovered by people I don't know is the most annoying thing - ever.

[tonstant.weader]

As a European newcomer to Facebook I think it is a complete mess. Many of the add-ons don't work properly, response time is tortoise-like and any clever feature is disguised to make it look infantile. It's interesting that a majority of users are outside the US, because the content and approach is almost totally geared to the US. The advertising is already annoying, irrelevant, and intrusive, so any further step in that direction will certainly lose them one user.

[madflacker]

I don't see anything about Facebook that is even remotely technologically impressive. And from a customer loyalty perspective - it seems pretty fickle when it comes to social media co's and their users (prone to jump ship to ANY new social utility that better catches their ADD / ADHD- challenged attention). And that 90 million subscriber number - what % of those are people like me that created an account out of curiosity (just like with Twitter), realized that this was a useless service to me (just like with Twitter), and then never returned? All of these social / community sites' reported numbers / usage should be scrutinized much more closely, IMO.

Btw: what surprises me is that companies like Yahoo and MLB.com (that have such kickass utilities for fantasy sports) haven't yet put in place social networks for sports affinity groups. Tying together fans of the same sports teams is a natural winner. Launch the service with a different portal for every college football team. Promo it at the home opener for the top 50 NCAA schools. Users can share pics from the game, sell / exchange tickets amongst themselves, et al. Ads served on pages are for local restaurants, school merchandise, etc. This would be a slam dunk no-brainer. Only PITA is cutting deals with the NCAA and the individual universities, which would be a real can of worms.

[t26l]

Sounds more like a breach of privacy - this FB Connect thing