Ben Miller

I've noticed a strange split in my online social life. Though there are plenty of exceptions and overlaps, for the most part, I communicate with my high school friends via AIM, whereas I use Facebook to communicate with my college and young-professional friends. Now, there is a reason Facebook is the current king: it is a more effective networking tool overall than AIM. For instance, if I want a lot of people to come to a particular event, I can use Facebook's impressive networking features to publicize the event far and wide among my social network. But for individual communication, chatting on AIM in real-time is far superior to Facebook's non-intuitive, almost throw-away messaging features. Why then do I find myself communicating with my friends here in D.C. via Facebook messaging?

Simple. I no longer take down folks' AIMs -- I Facebook them instead. There is a network effect: Facebook is so good at most social networking things, my fellows and I are in effect locked into it to for the things Facebook is not as good at (messaging). By contrast, when my friends have both AIM and Facebook -- i.e., my high school friends -- we use the superior service for communicationg: AIM.