The interesting comments posted before mine prompted me to read the whole fine article kindly submitted here. The article beings with "There's an entire generation where every photo, message, post, idea between adolescence and adulthood is cataloged on Facebook." The posting of photos as conveniently as Facebook allows posting photos is somewhat new (as is home Internet connections with enough bandwidth to put up with an online service jam full of photos), but on the whole this doesn't feel new to me.<p>Maybe Facebook doesn't feel new to me because I am old (born during the Eisenhower administration, just as the Space Age was beginning). To me, Facebook in 2012 seems much like AOL in 1998: a huge, dominant force in Internet interaction among the general public that is already doomed by fundamental flaws in its business plan. I'm old, and I have seen predictions come and go over the years, but this is my prediction about Facebook, and I'm sticking to it: "Facebook will go the way of AOL, still being a factor in the industry years from now, but also serving as an example of a company that could never monetize up to the level of the hype surrounding it."<p>Facebook makes it MORE apparent, if anything, than the earlier forms of online communication did how selectively people report details about their lives in online communities. I've known some good friends through online acquaintance, interspersed with real-world interaction, for twenty years. I'm well aware that the online picture of any person is incomplete, just as the knowledge of one person by any one acquaintance is incomplete. I think Facebook provides some convenience in keeping up with a varied group of Facebook "friends" including several of my first cousins, one of my children who has grown up and moved away from home (he was an early adopter of Facebook, and is now largely tired of it), former co-workers, classmates, current members of the same professional associations, and so on. It's a lot of fun to see friends from different phases of my life interact and learn from one another. I've managed to make my Facebook wall be like a targeted Hacker News: a place where I can find thoughtful discussion of links I discover while Web-browsing. To me, that's something well worth growing old with.<p>The article includes the paragraph: "You can message someone you haven't spoken with in years, and yet it visually flows right under some unimaginably unrelated conversation from 2007. And when you realize that exact numerical gap between the years, it stings a little. Reading how you've changed, how they've changed, and thinking about everything that didn't happen in-between." That is the most startling default setting of the Facebook messaging system. My email inbox, which is sorted strictly by date order, obscures the gaps in communication I have with some correspondents. (Cleaning out my drafts folder from time to time discloses those gaps.) But real-world analogies of this are receiving Christmas cards after a gap of a few years in correspondence, and the like. The strength of communication in each relationship ebbs and flows, or so I have observed for more than five decades now.