The "social web" is no where near as important as search. Imagine removing search from the net. Now imagine removing Facebook or other social networking sites. The difference is staggering.

I think you should consider your own example more closely. "Search" is not just Google, it would be all search engines (good luck finding that old email). Similarly, removing social would not just remove Facebook, it would also remove hacker news (certainly a social website) and all the other forums you frequent.

Social websites, widely, are websites that allow users to connect to each other. Even 4chan is social. Without search, we couldn't find anything on the web, but without social we couldn't talk to anyone. I don't know which is worse, but they would both be enormous losses.

I think you are calling more things social than the word pre-supposes. If you call 4chan "social", then you have the wrong definition - 4chan is a forum, a place people discuss things.

Facebook, or "the social web" as its coined these days, is about the friend graph (ditto with twitter - its about who you follow, and who follows you), not about discussions.

Imho, the web will function perfectly well without facebook - each of the features of facebook such as photosharing, event organizing etc, all have ready replacements. Sure, the friend graph helps you connect easier/faster, but taking it away isn't as detrimental as taking away search.

As I said in my post, I'd include forums in "social." Facebook has the graph, but you could construct a weaker form of that graph using any of the popular community-focused sites.

Not really. Facebook and other social sites nowadays all rely on one true personal identity. On forums on the other hand you can be whatever, multiple times, and have a discussion with yourself (even a meaningful one).

I have at least one friend with multiple Facebook accounts, which he has talk to each other as a joke. Much like Facebook, most of the significant interactions on forums happen between permanent, established accounts (4chan could be the exception that proves the rule, as everything on it is arbitrary and real projects are organized elsewhere).

Facebook wants to portray itself as a one-person-one-account service, but the lack of extra accounts is largely because they've obsoleted most of the reasons people would create multiple accounts.

For what it's worth, I think Facebook is a fad, and I think it's peaked. I know this is purely anecdotal, but most of my friends and colleagues deleted or abandoned their profiles long ago. The majority of the people I know that actively use the website are in their 50's and up. Like my mother.

I remember about four or five years ago when everyone was asking each other to look them up on Facebook. I never hear this anymore! The only time I ever note that Facebook is mentioned in conversation is with respect to their stock price or some privacy gaffe. And yet Google, Apple, and even Microsoft products frequently crop up in discussions I have.

... and I'm in the biochemistry field!

> The social web is just as important as search on the web.

Teachers are just as important as lawyers. But search captures people looking to solve problems (i.e. potential customers) while social captures people looking to waste time.