Interesting article by Mark Prigg in the Evening Standard on Monday about the slowdown in the growth of Facebook. He argues that Facebook has reached a tipping point. That users are becoming bored with the existing format and are looking for more "boutique" social networks.
Which makes me ask, at an anthropological and psychological level, what is Facebook for?
On a superficial level it allows people to have their own web-page, keep in touch with people and publish short pieces of text.
On a more fundamental level I would suggest that Facebook is a machine for generating self-actualisation (which is at the summit of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs).
Facebook users are able to use the site to invent the person they most want to be, projecting a highly stylised and mediated version of themselves to the "outside world". They are able to edit and reinvent this persona, and even create multiple personas. By doing this they are able to satisfy a deep psychological need.
However Facebook is a very imperfect "self-actualisation machine". It may satisfy students (for which it was designed), but other demographic groups find it limiting. Therefore we can expect to see a kaleidoscope of different self-actualisation machines developing.
Also self-actualisation machines tailored to different societies (China, Russia, Brazil etc).
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