I too am a sucker for simplicity and revisit a select few quite often. I find that those which keep me engaged the most would define simplicity as “absence of pretentiousness”, “clear and open expression”, “clean”,”pure”, “straightforward”.

Slightly more altruistic than those who associate simple with words like “unlearned’, ‘ignorant’, ‘foolish’, or ‘vague’.

If Facebook truly wanted to “help people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers” then they would send me an email with Julie Hex’s message. Unfortunately their revenue model quickly trumps simplicity and instead I get an email saying “Julie Hex has sent you a very important message — stop what you are doing and log into our website”.

John’s advice on questioning what engages us in the first place is well headed. And while that is a sure-fire way to engage the consumer, it’s a tough sell when the “complexity” pays the bills.

J Garlough.

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I’ll leave you with a conversation from the Facebook developer’s forum:

tspree15 : “What are you guys earning dollar wise per user?”

DShinka : “Facebook has approximately 40 million Unique Active Users
in the past 30 days and a valuation between $10Bn and $15Bn.
This translates to between $250 and $375 per active user.”

tomkincaid : “I know a girl who has a single ‘active user’ per night and gets $2000″

[ http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=309 ]

I would see value questionning what engages us in the first place and then stripping the product of complexity to keep the consumer coming back.

Great post!