FACEBOOK IS A FAD

First off I hate Facebook, for all of the reasons that others have already stated and more; it's a dull, ugly looking marketing information harvester for barely web literate show offs who, in the main, have nothing of note to say past what they're having for dinner or what they've just bought/been to etc etc
I've had an account since dot but I use it as nothing more than an contact depository for vague acquaintances from my past (who are more often than not in my past for a reason), people I meet who I do not wish to have my email yet and people who I don't really like but don't wish to offend them by not giving them my 'real' contact details.
None of the information, bar my name, on the site is genuine, not even my 'likes and dislikes'. Why the hell would I want 400+ tenuous acquaintances knowing what I like, what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with etc etc
Unless, of course, I'm some kind of shallow, self-aggrandising idiot who speaks to everyone I know in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time about everything I'm doing whether I think they'd be interested to hear it or not.
The thing is, this is why it's so damn popular. This is exactly what a lot of people want to do today; fish for unwarranted attention from others and compare themselves incessantly with their 'friends'. It's brain bendingly adolescent, often hilariously passive aggressive and all in all a perfect illustration of modern society.
"LOOK! It's me! I exist! And here I am being brilliant once again."
"I haven't got anything of actual worth to say to you personally so I've sent out this generic message/request for a farm animal/Fedora to see who replies so I can gauge my self-worth."
A major part of Facebook's success was it's incredibly fortunate timing in that it was absolutely bang-on at launch to catch the flowering of the mainstream audience as they caught on to 2.0. MySpace was just a little too early, too young, too, dare I say it, creatively based and customisable (HTML coding? What?) to hit that middle of the road crowd. All the Soccer moms and Auntie June in Perth, that girl in your office who can't "get the songs on her iPod", your mate the plasterer who "can't be doing with all that internet lark mate" or all those other people who haven't really got a clue how the web works, and quite literally don't, or didn't, really care. The masses. They don't post on, or maybe even read, tech blogs. They probably don't even know what RSS is. They are legion. And if your application/device/whatever turns their head then you my friend are loaded.
These people love Facebook. It's for them. It is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, their gateway to the internet. They trust it because it is the internet but only populated by their 'friends'. This gives them the illusion of safety from all that crazy online wild west scaremongering they read about in the Daily Mail.
It's a middle of the road place for middle of the road people. It's the ITV of the internet. It's the online suburbia where everyone's personal space looks almost identical and can't be customised by anyone. Magnolia walls and manicured lawns for all. No exceptions.
And these are the reasons that give it such very real staying power because this audience is the perfect audience; it's enormous, conservative in it's thinking, extremely loyal to things it gets involved with and has a very high resistance to change. They hate change. They will not go anywhere else until all their friends do. And their friends aren't going anywhere...well, you get the point...
Eventually it will be superseded, everything always is. Personally, I think it will be something that comes out of the Mobile arena. I don't know what but whomever nails the perfect social mobile media app in the next year or so will be crowned King of the World. Well, for a little while anyway...