now, tastes more like real life

I quite liked this way of describing Facebook, since it's a much more accurate description of how I use it:

Zuckerberg: ...Our whole theory is that people have real connections in the world. People communicate most naturally and effectively with their friends and the people around them. What we figured is that if we could model what those connections were, [we could] provide that information to a set of applications through which people want to share information, photos or videos or events. But that only works if those relationships are real. That's a really big difference between Facebook and a lot of other sites. We're not thinking about ourselves as a community — we're not trying to build a community — we're not trying to make new connections.

TIME: Why do you describe Facebook as a "social utility" rather than a "social network?"

Zuckerberg: I think there's confusion around what the point of social networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social networks have different goals — some serve the function of business networking, some are media portals. What we're trying to do is just make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information and share information. We always try to emphasize the utility component.

Interview with Mark Zuckerberg