But AOL was sold to people who didn't know better -- who hadn't even seen the real internet. I use Facebook because I have seen the wild and woolly real internet, and Facebook's better -- at least, it's better at the things it does. It's the best way to share photos (with friends and family -- for sharing with the whole world you probably want Flickr or Picasa), it makes much more sense than Twitter for twittering-type behaviour (manually clicking on "@jonrosenberg" links to follow conversation threads?), and the on-site "webmail" messaging facility is policed and so is spam-free. And the fact that all these things are neatly integrated with one another is a big plus, too.

I don't pay any attention to the vampire sorority crap, but then I don't pay any attention to World of Warcraft either -- or to soccer, for that matter. In each case I accept that some of my friends, otherwise perfectly sensible, do pay them attention.

There are still things you'd need the real internet for -- Facebook's blogging support isn't as good as Blogspot's, and it's discussion-board system isn't as good as the one this BBS runs on -- and maybe one day Google Wave will come along and do all of these things better still, but for now it's a pretty essential helper for long-distance friendships, and there's a whole bunch of people outside my immediate social radius who I'd be interacting with a lot less, or not at all, without it.

Peter