"Facebook gets it's revenues from advertising, which may indeed be called frivolous. Perhaps Facebook's popularity is a sign of the times: someone asked my friend "I have facebook, yahoo messenger, linkedin, dreamstake...what do you have?" My friend replied "I have a job". Lucky fellow! Many people have more than one account and many more, do not log in to their accounts for months. You do not need Facebook to find your friends but you do need google to find something on the net.

"As my grandmother once told me, 'never trust a salesman'. I have noticed roughly 95% of all Indian IPOs are available at lower than their issue price, within a few months.

"On another issue, I find the word superpower being displayed very often in your comments. In most of these instances it would be more appropriate to prefix superpower with 'economic'. Japan was an economic power. While it is only natural for financial entities to focus (only) on economic activities, it is very myopic for governments to do so. America has been in the forefront of developing technologies without which modern economies cannot function efficiently. These research and development activities need to be focussed upon for the continuation of the past progress of Mankind. If not America, China India and the whole world will eventually go the way of the Japanese economy."

David Fuller's view Thanks for the observations. I love the job story.