In the 1870s, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota experienced a gold rush and quickly became home to gunfighters, gamblers, cussin' and many a woman of ill repute. Now, Deadwood is just a tourist trap in boring ole' South Dakota.

In many ways, that's exactly what's happened to the social-networking website Facebook.

Facebook's formative years (2003-2006) started out much like the Wild West. Open, kind of barren, but people were free to do as they pleased without much worry of repercussion.

Ridiculous status updates, embarrassing photos, nasty late-night wall postings on an ex's wall following a "user is now single" update. With the creation of the news feed in September 2006, which allows a user to see what other users are doing, it was like picking up a newspaper in the morning and every article was a gossip story about someone you knew.

It was awesome.

But slowly, Facebook has evolved into something else. Something that manages to take up much more of my time, yet bores me in a way it never did before.

Here's how it happened.

Phase 1: Fear your neighbours! Then gentrify!

When the media discovered Facebook (scholars suggest this was sometime in late 2006 after it was mentioned on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"), there was one nearly homogenous response in reporting - "lock your doors, hide your face, evildoers want your information!"

After being scared about their privacy, users started clamping down on the way they allowed their information to be seen. The news feed has slowly been reduced to a shadow of its former self, with many users choosing to severely limit the feature.

At the same time, the website skyrocketed in popularity to the point where both your mom and your boss were on it. Suddenly, those pictures of you being held by the ankles while you're performing a keg stand didn't seem like such a smart thing to post.

Worst of all, were all the reported cases of employers scouting out Facebook for the dirt on potential employees. While Facebook profiles are always an idealized version of a person, soon people began setting their profiles to look like a bland virtual-resume -- just in case.

This is not to say there's not some fun, risqué stuff on Facebook. There is. But with the tent growing larger and larger, it's no surprise that people have become more tentative and conservative with what they post and how they act.

Phase 2: Every day is exactly the same

Every Facebook user over 25 knows (but won't necessarily admit to it) that the best part of Facebook is "catching up" with someone you haven't seen in years.

Seeing their profile for the first time, with its orgy of photos (are they still hot?), information on marital status, jobs and children -- well, that's as good as Facebook gets.

Eventually though, you are going to run out of people that you will want to glean your years apart with a check of their profile. Seeing that a high school friend travelled in India in 2003, dated a German while touring Ghana in 2005 and got a hideous tattoo - that's free entertainment worth my time.

But after that initial "catch-up", you are left with the day-to-day boring minutiae. A sample:

• Tim is going to the shower, then bed.
• Paula is tanning.
• Sarah is loving her new red kitchenaid mixer!
• Jen is without power and cable at home.

I already have my own perfectly mundane life to deal with, I don't need to know yours.

Dr. Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University anthropologist has said that the brain's cognitive power limits the size of a person's (real-life) social network to about 150 people. That sounds reasonable.

Yet, I have one legitimately popular friend with 922 Facebook friends at last count. I also have another "friend" that everyone I know despises yet has nearly 1,000 friends. This is data Malcolm Gladwell should write a book about.

Both of my "friends" have massive networks, but must be inundated with so much data it's utterly pointless for them. They might as well be logged into someone else's account because there's no way they are interested in the majority of people on their account.

You just can't care about your massive amount of Facebook friends, your brain won't do it.

Phase 3: Useful to the point it's work

This week it was reported that social networking has surpassed email in terms of worldwide popularity, with Facebook being the most popular of the social networking sites.

This is not surprising, as Facebook has an email system that simplifies getting in touch with people, as well as a built-in instant messenger.

Facebook has also become the go-to planning calendar for social groups of a certain age, with its Event interface making it easier than ever to plan a social gathering.

Add in socially-conscious groups to join, bands and TV shows I need to become a "fan" to promote, too many applications to count (I'm especially looking at you Scrabble!), birthday wishes to give and a quick log-in to Facebook can feel like the start of a marathon.

You know when you put off logging in to Facebook, the same way you put off taking out the trash, that's not a good sign for something that's supposed to be entertainment.

Somewhere along the line, Facebook stopped being a place to "creep" your ex-girlfriend's profile and became a semi-useful technology you can't live without.

The wild Deadwood of U.S. history eventually became Deadwood, the town that's a National Historic Landmark. Prettier, more useful and a lot less crazy - truly, the inverse of the mores of its founding.

I'm afraid that's the same fate awaiting Facebook. A place where people will stop by to say, "It used to be fun here."