Facebook, AOL, and missing the boat
Kottke hits it on the nail with Facebook’s lack of public content. Other people have suggested the creep factor, but I haven’t really seen much of it yet (cliques seem to keep to their own). In the end, its shelf life will be short, as is pretty much anything online.
Facebook does do something well that no one has been able to do yet, not AOL, not MySpace, or the others. They’ve captured relationships (networking in the business world) in a way that’s downright slick. It’s damned easy to use too, for the normal folk, and is providing a huge amount of entertainment for people who don’t normally hack at web stuff.