"Yahoo has no vision. It has no purpose. It's dispensable."
Facebook may have no vision. (I actually think they do. Even if it's not very clear or savory.) But facebook certainly isn't dispensable. The analogy would be much more complete if you imagined that Yahoo was the only main email provider, emails didn't get exchanged between servers and in order to get an email to yahoo mail users you had to go to Yahoo to mail them. That's about how dispensable Facebook is to a lot of people's private lives.
Yeah I think Facebook has a vision which is plain to see if you look for it, they are working very hard on unified messaging/communication system. Which in its current state isn't interesting, and if successful probably won't be interesting, instead it will be subtle and invasive into my daily routine.
I for one haven't noticed a change at all on my Facebook... I think the "boring" aspect maybe a tech related issue where people expect to see something crazing happening every week. I know I often open up Hacker news and go "ooohhhh nothing to see here today", which is more a sign of my indulgence in news as opposed to article nothing happening out there.
Facebook can be replaced by a new social network. For the moment, however, there is no compelling new vision for social networking (and I fully agree that facebook will not be replaced by facebook++, but rather with a reimagination of the concept)
Facebook may have no vision. (I actually think they do. Even if it's not very clear or savory.) But facebook certainly isn't dispensable. The analogy would be much more complete if you imagined that Yahoo was the only main email provider, emails didn't get exchanged between servers and in order to get an email to yahoo mail users you had to go to Yahoo to mail them. That's about how dispensable Facebook is to a lot of people's private lives.