I agree 100% with everything you've said. But there's one more aspect. The tyranny of, err, 'de facto'.

Yeah, so I can't come up with a pithy name for it. But it's that almost unstoppable force that means Facebook is now "mainstream", just like Windows is. Not because it's the best experience, nor even the first of its kind - but because, somehow, it reached a critical mass. Such systems and services are *almost* unstoppable.

There are a number of people I know who absolutely agree that Facebook is evil and hate the constant change and danger, but who resignedly stay because "that's where everyone is". These are intelligent people and "everyone" means the people who are important to them.

Heck, after almost a year away, I returned to Facebook for that very reason. I've quit again now (off the back of the Instragram fiasco).

I look at how Apple is steaming ahead with massive growth in the general computing space and yet still only command a small minority of their potential market – and I see little hope for Facebook to decline.

So the tyranny of free will continue to have a poster child in Facebook. It'll take someone with foresight and balls at the top of places like Twitter to make any change.