Face the facts.

Remember when everyone jumped ship from Friendster to Myspace, and Myspace got so freakin' huge that your grandma joined? Well, that's about to happen again. Since Facebook expanded beyond college students and began allowing everyone to join, the social networking site has doubled in size. By some measures Facebook is already blowing Myspace out of the water:

• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since January
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the web
• Facebook Photos draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three photo sites combined

While I've been frank about hating Myspace and pimping Virb as the technologically superior alternative, the truth is that Virb has stalled out a bit. People aren't joining. Obviously, Facebook doesn't have that problem. What they do have is a killer set of features Myspace can't begin to touch:

• Tag your friends in photos. Find out when your pals have uploaded photos that include you.
• Twitter-like status function lets you keep up with your pals. You can even subscribe to this in your RSS reader.
  
• Mini-feed also tells you when your pals change their profile, upload their photos, update their blog, or start a new relationship. But...
  
• You can tweak and fine tune your privacy settings individually so that your friends only see what you want them to see. You can even delete individual items from your personal feed.
  
• Import your existing blog/livejournal.
• Share videos and links with your pals.
• Sell your stuff in the new Classified. A little different than Craigslist, because sellers will be people in your network (e.g., Houston or Rice University). Makes it easy to sell and deliver locally to people who can't scam you (because you can see their profile and real name).
• Compete with your pals in March Madness and NBA Playoff brackets.
• Comment on everything.
  

The bottom line is this: Facebook lets you share your life with people you care about while allowing you to easily micro-manage your privacy. Instead of worrying about customizing your crappy looking page, Facebook focuses on your connections with real people. That's why eventually you and everyone you know is going to be on this site. I'm not even going to ask you to join. I don't have to. You, your co-workers, your friends and family will all sign up.  And you will wonder what took you so long.

Why? Because Facebook is becoming something Myspace has never been, and could never be.

Useful.