* Posting a question: I go to the site, click on "Ask," and post my question.
* Searching for answers: I go to the site, type in my search, and search.
Facebook:
* Posting a photo: I go to the site and look for a camera icon. I can't find one, so I start clicking on stuff like "Account", "Home" and "Profile". Still nothing. I start clicking on everything that isn't a friend's wall post. Eventually I hit "More" on my list of apps (the fully-expanded list still doesn't take up the entire height of my screen), and see "Photos". I look for an upload button and see nothing. In the upper right corner, in 10pt font, I eventually find "My Albums." I click there and search for an upload button. Nothing. I click "Create album," and finally get to an upload prompt.
* Changing a privacy setting: I see a post on Hacker News about some new Facebook feature, and of course, the default is "Everyone in the world can see everything that this feature involves, even if it's something you locked down for every other feature." No one has posted a reply explaining how to lock it down yet, but it's Facebook, right? How hard could it be? I go to Facebook and click "Privacy Settings." Honestly, they change the layout every few months, so I have no idea what it looks like now, and I don't remember what it looked like last time, but every single time, I have to re-learn the entire model and it takes forever and half the time I don't even find what I'm looking for.
* Take a quiz: See a quiz on a friend's wall. Click on the app name. Click on "Take Quiz." Get a popup saying "Let this app access your profile: [Click Here]." Close tab.
People don't come to facebook to post photos. The right thing to compare posting photos on facebook would be, maybe editing your user profile in stackoverflow.
Also, posting on stackoverflow requires you to be familiar with Markdown, an obscure markup language based on conventions used by geeks on mailing lists.
On facebook, the first thing you do is look at other people's posts and statuses. And that's incredibly easy; you don't even do anything, facebook just shows it to you.
It's incredibly easy for you because you know how facebook works.
The first time I used facebook, I was like whaa? What's a WALL? What's the difference between a post and a note? How is sharing a link specifically different from embedding it in your status?
Lots of complexity there, but we learn it after a while.
People join facebook because all their friends are on it, and they get to see a news feed.
It's not instantly familiar or usable, and no one knows what's a wall or a news feed, but when you find pictures of a friend you haven't seen in 10 years, you'll probably stick around and try to figure it out.
Of course, at the beginning the only users where college students and people in their teens or twenties. But now even people in their forties join just because they can keep in touch with their distant relatives and old friends.
* Posting a question: I go to the site, click on "Ask," and post my question.
* Searching for answers: I go to the site, type in my search, and search.
Facebook:
* Posting a photo: I go to the site and look for a camera icon. I can't find one, so I start clicking on stuff like "Account", "Home" and "Profile". Still nothing. I start clicking on everything that isn't a friend's wall post. Eventually I hit "More" on my list of apps (the fully-expanded list still doesn't take up the entire height of my screen), and see "Photos". I look for an upload button and see nothing. In the upper right corner, in 10pt font, I eventually find "My Albums." I click there and search for an upload button. Nothing. I click "Create album," and finally get to an upload prompt.
* Changing a privacy setting: I see a post on Hacker News about some new Facebook feature, and of course, the default is "Everyone in the world can see everything that this feature involves, even if it's something you locked down for every other feature." No one has posted a reply explaining how to lock it down yet, but it's Facebook, right? How hard could it be? I go to Facebook and click "Privacy Settings." Honestly, they change the layout every few months, so I have no idea what it looks like now, and I don't remember what it looked like last time, but every single time, I have to re-learn the entire model and it takes forever and half the time I don't even find what I'm looking for.
* Take a quiz: See a quiz on a friend's wall. Click on the app name. Click on "Take Quiz." Get a popup saying "Let this app access your profile: [Click Here]." Close tab.