I like Tim’s suggestion that perhaps these companies do not always *know* why their stuff is successful. Or why people use them. Or how. I think that’s probably right, especially when the systems are simple — basically just “carrier waves” for user-defined applications.

And I like the email analogy, only b/c it makes me imagine a future where in the “to:” field of an email I type: “Matt, Tim, and everyone who is friends with all three of us” — ha! That’s pretty amazing, actually.

It’s kind of insane, really — Facebook has all of this information about us, but doesn’t know us at all! Maybe it’s just too much data — how would you even begin to assemble it all?

This might be a worthwhile distinction to be made between serious and non-serious software companies: Apple, Microsoft, and Google (among others) actually devote a lot of effort to figuring out who their users are, how they use their machines, and what they want from them. They also are capable of anticipating where things are going, and at helping to drive this development. Facebook? Twitter? Not so much — which is part of the reason why the former companies have figured out how to make crazy money off what they do, and a lot of the social web-apps people are still scratching their heads over what to do with all of these users.

Btw,

it makes me imagine a future where in the “to:” field of an email I type: “Matt, Tim, and everyone who is friends with all three of us” — ha! That’s pretty amazing, actually.

Yes! Smart playlists for email! Why not?