S. has recently become very interested in social networking sites and has drug me to get FaceBook and MySpace pages. FaceBook is pretty cool in that it’s like a social networking engine with an API for user application development. Judging by some of the applications, they give developers a lot of access. But the thing that I don’t get is why the people behind FaceBook seem to so lack ambition. First of all, they have yet to completely shed their college-oriented origins, so their network remains entirely too fragmented. But the real oversight is why, with that huge existing user database, they haven’t deployed more core functionality. Right now is seems like FaceBook is just a sort of online business card. Why haven’t they deployed dating, group scheduling and calendaring, blogging, employment, classified advertisements and so on? They could be match.com, meetup.com, livejournal.com, monster.com and craigslist.com all rolled into one. Or if not build the functionality themselves, why not partner and integrate or build some gateways? There are some features like what I am talking about, but they are rudimentary. Why not put them front and center? Seems like a recipe for obsolescence to me. In this environment it’s innovate or wither.