* had the right balance of privacy settings and public people discovery

* was a safe space where not everything is public, granular control of what is shared to whom

* faciltated conversations between people that know/respect each other

* was chaotic, people using it in their own way / for their own purposes

* used real names, non-anonymity

* used the social graph = relationships, NOT lists/tables

* introduction of news feed was widely hated, but spiked engagement like nothing else

* the facebook platform allowed integrated widgets/games as a win-win for facebook and widget/game devs

* groups kept people there

* “shipping features is way more fun than making things safe and secure”