Welcome to the new web.
I'm a member of a forum for graduates of one of the schools I went to.  In 2007 it was a vibrant and active forum, growing steadily, and straining its hosting account, which constantly had to be expanded.<p>At some point, around 2009, most of the members of this forum got Facebook accounts. That forum is now completely dead.<p>Facebook took all the oxygen out of the site, and it seems like a lot of other sites.<p>Now very mainstream people seem to think of Facebook as "the internet" and they just hang out there.  Some of the bigger sites are doing ok, still, of course.<p>But at least for that forum, its audience is gone.<p>To a person, the members of the audience say they love it, and many of them say they hate facebook because "its so impersonal."  On the forum they were able to share more private things with closer friends.<p>I think they would rather hang out on the forum, but there isn't the critical mass anymore... simply because Facebook is more addictive.<p>It has gotten into some sort of a gamification, or addiction loop, in these peoples heads, it seems.<p>I think the web is going to undergo a radical change in the next 5 or so years.