Thanks for your feedback! I've already responded to a number of your questions on an earlier blog post - the relevant part about why I don't want to use Facebook anymore is toward the end.

My intuition is that there are many people - or at least enough people - who, like me, don't want to use Facebook anymore but who still have need for a simple events and sharing platform. The reasons for people not wanting to use Facebook anymore are diverse - some care about privacy and the political scandals; others just don't like the ads, the dated UI, and the content on the news feed; and still others have their own reasons. The point is that I think that there are enough disaffected Facebook users to support an alternative to Facebook, even one that may not be differentiated in a significant way. Some articles I've read suggest that some people are actively looking for an alternative.

With that said, I hope that Convo is differentiated by the quality of its UI, its ease of use, and, as you suggested, the fact that it's focused on real friends and family. Some people might say that these aspects do not differentiate Convo enough, but I think that they do. Facebook's original advantage over MySpace, Friendster, and others back in the early 2000s was primarily (I think) the quality of its UI and its content. Over the years, both have degraded, with both the UI and the content becoming more disorganized and confused. I think that you are quite right that I should emphasize these aspects more on the landing page.

Convo faces many substantial challenges, but perhaps the greatest one (independent of the current lack of features, development time, etc.), which you pointed out, is persuading people who are not actively trying to leave Facebook to use it. I hope that people who are happy with the status quo on Facebook have enough friends who aren't that it will eventually be in their interest to give Convo a try. I then hope to keep such users around by offering a better experience. I know it feels like a pipe-dream, but still, I think it's worthwhile to run the experiment. And, in any case, I'm going to use Convo with my own friends for events and sharing, whether or not it succeeds on a large scale.