I share your appreciation for the UI and execution of Facebook. Especially when compared to the nauseating MySpace, Facebook is a thing of beauty and elegance. It is somewhat unfortunate (but perhaps unavoidable) that the Facebook development platform has reduced the cleanliness of the UI and threatened to reduce it to the clutter of MySpace, but the platform is the very thing that demonstrates the fantastic architecture and forward-thinking of Zuckerberg and crew. MySpace would have to be re-written from the ground up to accomplish anything at that level.

As for the usefulness and viability of Facebook, I’m surprised this has escaped you — though I have no idea of your place in life, and how that my affect your impressions.

Though LinkedIn can be useful when networking and job searching, I haven’t found it very interesting beyond that. It’s a good business tool, but it doesn’t serve a daily need, at least in my experience.

Facebook, on the other hand, provides much better ability to simply “share life” together. I’m in my mid-thirties, and have been able to reconnect with dozens of people from high school, college, and elsewhere whom I haven’t talked with in years. Now, I keep up with what’s going on in their lives, see pictures of their kids, wish them happy birthday, know about their job changes, and basically keep in touch with old friends the way I’ve always claimed I wanted to.

I’m also a part-time youth pastor, and as you might imagine, Facebook pays enormous dividends in that role, since it allows me to keep up with the students in my group.

Anyway, those are some thoughts — thanks for your post.

Now that’s crazy talk. I once wrote a paper in college on the impact of VP choices on election outcomes…despite what others have said, I wasn’t able to determine an impact. Then again I am not a statistician so my analysis may have been a little lacking. Got an A on the paper though.

That interlude was to say, you are overcomplicating my bet.

However, you get it right and i’ll buy you dinner at Momofuku.