[lug] The deal with applets / notifications / panels / indicators / systray.....

[David L. Willson]

...
> models, is a rather tricky business.  Nobody can explain
> satisfactorily why Facebook is about to IPO for $+75B and MySpace is
> about to go bankrupt.  Furthermore, how did Facebook become the
> "passport" that Microsoft and OpenID tried to be?  The specific
> details matter, and frameworks create distance from those details.

This is bald opinion, and mine, unsubstantiated by statistics or scientific measures:

Facebook is (and was) simple, so I can get connected with minimal effort. Seriously, someone is counting clicks and keystrokes over there.

Facebook shares as much information as possible, so I can (usually) tell whether the fellow I found is the fellow I was looking for.

Facebook hits a very high value point in the effort to give everyone what they want. Buyers, sellers, socializer's, gamers...

People distrust Facebook and Amazon a little less than they dis-like remembering another set of credentials. Microsoft seems unable to achieve that same low level of distrust. Maybe it's got something to do with the legion of lawyers and legislators they control.