“The step after ubiquity is invisibility,” my old friend from Apple Al Mandel explained to me years ago. And it’s true. Telephone service was once rare but is now universal and anything truly universal eventually become a commodity. No wonder phone companies no longer make money from long-distance calling nor — as Verizon’s sale of its New England landlines business confirms — even make enough money from local phone service. Now it is all about mobile and thank God for texting and ringtones, the telco execs say… for awhile. Well I think the same thing is about to happen to Facebook — privacy issues or no.

Facebook is huge with 350 million members but that’s not the problem. The problem is that my Facebook friends list is too long and so is yours. I have 809 Facebook friends. My wife has friend envy because she thinks my friends are generally more interesting than her friends. I wouldn’t know because I’m only on Facebook once or twice a week for a few minutes. But even that’s enough to know my friend list is too long. (…)

Facebook is being really stupid lately about making money from its traffic by violating user privacy. (…) If Facebook really wants to get profitable it needs to get smaller by kicking-off users who don’t make it money. (…)

Facebook is useless to me. We’re all too connected to really connect.

{ Robert X. Cringely | Continue reading }

video { Thanks Tim }

With social networking sites enabling the romantically inclined to find out more about a potential lover before the first superficial chat than they previously would have in the first month of dating, this is an important question for the future of romance.

{ Meteuphoric | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, August, 1973 }

{ The patterns of links between buyers and sellers of sex in an online forum differs in important ways from other internet related networks, says a new study. This may have important implications for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases | Patterns of Captured in Social Network | full story }

update/related { A top journalist caught on tape with a pile of cocaine and a party girl named Moomoo, an opposition activist filmed handing over a bribe… Who’s behind the spate of mysterious coke-and-hooker entrapment attacks on Russian opposition figures? The Daily Beast | full story }

{ Intimate messages misdirected by Facebook last week }

{ The 4 big myths of profile pictures: It’s better to smile, You shouldn’t take your picture with your phone or webcam, Guys should keep their shirts on, Make sure your face is showing. | OK Trends | Full story }