I don’t agree with you about Facebook, either. I have concerns about certain issues like privacy, but other than that it looks like an interesting social experiment and quite an innovative evolution of the internet. Maybe you keep in touch with your friends in your own way, but people using Facebook (or similar things) track down old friends they lost touch with 15 years before and interact with people they know on the other side of the world in a way that’s comparable as if everyone was in the same big room. For some of these people, busy lives (perhaps doing work) would mean there would be no way on earth they’d have the time to keep in touch with all their old friends throughout the world and keep track of what everyone’s up to, but stuff like Facebook makes it possible.

Facebook’s obviously not worth anything to you if that’s really how you see it, but it’s worth something to the people who use it and to people for whom it works better than other methods of communication and staying in touch. I’m sure that many people would tell me that going tramping’s a waste of my time because there’s nothing economically useful to gain from it, but it’s a part of my life that I really enjoy and it’s another way I stay in touch with some of my friends.

Beyond this, of course, Facebook is a big marketing tool and that’s where the money comes from. If Facebook died then the marketing money would just move to whatever people were paying attention to now, and people would just lose touch with friends and everyone would be a little less happy. The economy wouldn’t die, as you’ve said, but you could say exactly the same for 90% of businesses. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good thing. (People still lose jobs, there’s less choice, etc etc.)

Anyway, that’s just my two cents at the moment. I haven’t thought it through in detail so perhaps I’ll adapt my ideas over time.

Mike, I am not going to argue with you on this, but here is a point that signifies of what you’re trying to say.

There are lots and millions of people out there , enjoying psychic predictions and homeopathy treatments in which you just know that these practices are useless. Are they worth something just because there are million followers? I’ll leave that to you to conclude.

I don’t think they’re going away any time soon, though. Several people who aren’t me seem to find them worth something and thus money continues to circulate. Hooray for our mighty economy!

What happens when real companies with real businesses as the car-makers such as Ford, General Motors and others collapse? Well, it will have an effect on the world economy and we all know this is fact. The sooner, useless companies like facebook disappears from the face of the earth, the better.

I know that there are suckers out there who live their life on facebook, since it is important for them to get in touch with friends. Friends? I know my friends and I don’t need Facebook to connect with them.