I’m not really into these social networking sites, but I got an auto e-mail from Facebook recently reminding me that three people I know (two old coworkers and my sister/mother of my nephew) have invited me to join.
Is it worth doing? How should I evaluate its worthiness? And does it matter that someone who has a page right now has the exact same (uncommon) name that I do?
We can be friends if you do 
OOooooh, so can we!
Well, it doesn’t take long to join. If you don’t end up using it, then it’s no big problem. The biggest danger is becoming hopelessly addicted. And there are plenty of people with the same name on the site. No worries there.
I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve had to limit the games I play. I enjoy Deadline, which is a current events trivia game. I do Pet Society and Restaurant City and recently joined Mafia Wars. I also do Zoo Builder. I was doing myFarm and FarmTown but I deleted those applications because they demanded too much of my time.
I’ve hooked up with old high school friends and friends from my old job. It also adds a new layer of interaction with your current friends…I joke with the people at work about stuff they posted on Facebook. Last week, I was on Facebook, chatting with a work friend who was stuck at work. It turned out she needed my help on something, and I was able to help her. If we hadn’t been on Facebook she wouldn’t have been able to get ahold of me.
It did put me back in touch with a lot of people from past jobs and places. And it’s shown me just how eclectic is the group of people I can tolerate spending time with.
There’s a Straight Dope team there. If you go, you can see who is who and friend who you like.
My father (who’s 60 years old and lived his whole life quite happily without much networking at all, online or otherwise) joined just so he could post comments to the pictures I posted. (He could see my photos if I sent him the link even without being a member.) Since then he’s met up with an old friend from school who posts links to funny sites and made contact with his nephew, who he hasn’t talked to in years since my crazy aunt cut off contact with the family.
Which is all just to say that it can be fun even if you have a total of four friends, as does my father. 
It depends on what you want out of it, I guess. I’ve found some old friends from high school, which is extremely cool. But I use it mostly for keeping in touch with my friends at the moment - I’m in grad school and almost everyone in my cohort has a Facebook page and we use it extensively to plan social events and communicate about school things.
Before I started school last fall, I hardly ever used it. (Like, I’d spend ten minutes a day checking status updates and commenting on posts. I’m not into any kind of gaming.) I imagine that if I had a regular job in which I didn’t socialize extensively with my coworkers, I’d probably go back to that pattern.
Do it. you know you want too
So, beyond reconnecting with people you didn’t like back when you went to school with them, and planning things you could just as easily plan by email, what’s the advantage of being on Facebook vs., say, Live Journal? How do you keep the undesirables from knowing you’ve registered and pestering you with friend requests if you have to use your real name?
On Facebook you can post and read very short quips about what’s on your mind. On LiveJournal, you have to write an essay of sorts.
On Facebook, the main focus is what your friends are doing/saying/thinking. On LiveJournal, it’s focused around you.
On Facebook, you can play games with your friends - either directly against them, or just matching up scores. I don’t think this is a feature of LiveJournal…?
If you want to avoid people on Facebook you just ignore their friend requests. I do it all the time. They don’t get a notice when you click “Ignore.” Hopefully they just forget they asked.
It depends on how social you are and how much you actually want to conect or re-connect with people. I had a friend who pushed me and pushed me to join Facebook.
But I frankly did not want to re-connect with 90% of the people I went to school with.
I joined. As you know its a small world. This person had friends with whom I studied in college. They have friends who are rather peripheral co-workers. Within a few weeks, I had a bunch of Facebook friends. Nw I have to be ultra careful what I say out there because stuff travels fast. I play a game from time to time. Its not really doing it for me.
I still have the account but I check it maybe once every other week.
(deleted at Neptunian Slug’s request)
So, basically it’s LiveJournal (plenty of people post little snippets and just read your friends list on LJ, it’s mostly how I do it) with games and no way to really avoid the sort of people who would keep hammering and hammering at you to friend them because you have absolutely zero anonymity. So, other than the games, it’s exactly what I thought it was. I believe I’ll continue to pass.
That’s cool. It’s not for everyone. Me, I couldn’t stand the thought of having an audience like on LJ, and having a lot of Internet-only friends - which I think LJ is good for. There’s definitely a different feel to each site, and they’re both very good at what they do.
I joined so I could keep in touch with an amazing co-worker when I quit my job. I very quickly found tons of old friends I’d last seen about 15 years ago, they’re now all married with kids and have posted tons of pictures and have moved all over the continent. It’s a great way to keep in touch with little public updates, or private messaging. I have my profile set that no one sees anything without them being a friend, so they have to ask before anyone sees my pictures or info (which is very bare bones to begin with). It came in handy to hook up with a long lost friend for her baby shower, but by far my favorite feature is just when people post their pics and you can see how their kids have grown, where they went on vacation, etc. You keep in touch, but when it’s convenient for you, whenever you want to log on.
Two thumbs up from me.
Well you can set ultra privacy settings so that people can’t just look up “CrazyCatLady” and find you. But once you friend someone, all their friends will see that X is now friends with Crazy Cat Lady. That’s how it spreads, even with ultra privacy.
I’m on both Facebook and LJ. My Facebook profile has my real name, and I mostly use it to keep in touch with friends I knew before I was on the internet, and occcasionally so my daughter can chat with my ex. I play FarmTown, and also like to do the polls on Living Social, but other than that I’d rather not play any other games. My LJ profile is more anonymous, and I’ve joined a few communities there in which I’d rather remain anonymous. Mostly I lurk in my LJ communities, and occasionally post in my journal, just so I don’t get my profile removed for lack of activity.
If you do join, make sure to join our group, Straight Dopers!