Why Facebook?

I remember back when MySpace was the big thing. I might have had a bad impression from the horrid color schemes and terrible layouts that everyone I knew used on their pages, but MySpace always repulsed me. Again, I am probably biased because of my personal social tendencies, but I never felt the need to publish the happenings of my life on MySpace for everyone in the world to read. However, when Facebook first emerged I saw a completely different system.
During my senior year of high school, I was coming to the realization that all of my classmates—many of whom I'd known since elementary school—were heading off to universities all over the country, and I might never see them again. That's when a friend introduced me to Facebook. It was just what I needed: an online address book that your friends maintain on their own as their contact information changes.
As MySpace has slowly faded from existence, Facebook has continued to grow in popularity, expanding from its original college audience to include anyone from elementary school children to the elderly in nursing homes. Facebook is now worth billions, whereas MySpace is worth less than the current owner bought it for. I believe Facebook's success is due to its key purpose: keeping you in contact with your friends, both past and present.
Although Facebook has added many new (and some annoying) features over the years, it has managed to keep its original usefulness without becoming too combersome. A decade ago, a high school or mission reunion was very difficult to organize. Contacting hundreds of old friends across the country was a very time-consuming and expensive ordeal if done by phone or mail. Now, with the advent of Facebook, you simply organize a group like "Kaohsiung Missionaries" or "Southridge Class of 2005." You invite a few people you know to join the group, and they forward invitations on to a few more people—like a phone tree, but more organized since Facebook tracks which people have already been contacted. Once the group is formed, members can broadcast messages to the group, announcing the activity. After the original work of creating the group, any mass-message to the group takes no time at all!
Facebook continues as a major networking tool today. With it, I can track my classmates from high school and college, friends from my mission on the other side of the world, and family spread across the nation. Unless the people at Facebook do something very stupid to destroy the usefulness of this tool, I doubt it will become any less popular in the coming years. It has given us a way to keep in touch with our friends and family, wherever they go, so long as they maintain their profiles. It fills a need—a need that I personally experienced—and it fills it well.