What Is Facebook, Really?
blogs.hbr.org/2011/02/what-is-facebook-is-becoming
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
Facebook is not really a website anymore. Rather, it's a vast, branded utility. It's like another World Wide Web, but with a profit motive. It's a kind of Wikipedia, but built on a corporate, not a cooperative, model. As a communications technology, it has radically changed the ways we connect with one another.