So far as I’m concerned the best thing is the ease of sharing photos. I like that I can put together little albums, label the photos or not as I please, tag people who appear in them so they know that they are on there and get comments from others on the photos. It’s fun bropwsing through others photos too – especially old friends.
Yes. 
(I thought you just won one, no?) I have 4 games going–it’s hard to keep track, sometimes…
No, you should not. Nobody should.
No word like “facebook” should be allowed to act like a verb. Do I google? Sure, I can accept that. Do I facebook? Fuck off. Take all your social networking bullshit and fuck right off.
never hear of fuckrightoff.com, is it cool?
This is inappropriate for IMHO. If you want to tell people to fuck off, take it to the Pit.
99% of the cute invitation things are pointless. Nobody will care if you do or don’t join in… do it if you think it looks like fun and don’t if you don’t. You can delete things that aren’t fun easily.
Every once in a while someone who is your actual friend will invite you for real to do something. Usually that person will let you know in some other way (like a post on your wall) that they actually think it’s something you would like.
Some applications give you points and stuff for sending out invitations or doing actions… so if someone, say, gives you something for your li’l green patch, it usually doesn’t really mean anything. There are some that are more personal, though… like I like my graffiti wall, free gifts, bumper stickers, and flair… when someone sends me one of those things they usually mean it and vice versa. Stuff like superpoke, li’l green patch, etc. is stuff you’ll send to people you kind of know but aren’t bffs with, and it means “hi” but not really anything else.
eta: and facebook won’t spam you. It will send you notifications for stuff, but you can set it so that it doesn’t do that if you have just way too many friends who write on your wall and comment on your stuff all the time.
At the urging of a friend, I created a rudimentary account tonight and was immediately creeped out about how much of my personal information I had to share. You’re required to use your real name, which is a big no-no for me on the internet. Your real name and date of birth are already two of the three things needed for someone to steal your identity. I also didn’t like the idea of having private conversations with my friends posted publicly. I deactivated my account 10 minutes after creating it and am tempted to call them to have them delete it permanently.
Am I being overly cautious? Why doesn’t anyone else seem ooged out about putting their real name on the internet for everyone to see? I maintain a MySpace account, which contains neither my real name nor my picture, so the people who friend me either really know who I am or are porn spams, which are easily denied.
Missed edit window…
I understand people will respond with, “Facebook only lets as many people see you as you allow it.” I understand that, but I still can’t hide my real name. Besides, if I limit people searching me to “Friends Only”, then no one who wants to friend me would ever be able to find me, so what’s the point?
I don’t know. If I wrote a magazine article, it would have my real name. If I did something newsworthy, they’d use my real name. If I were on a game show, they’d use my real name. If I ran for public office or even asked a question at a televised debate, my real name would be paraded out for all to see.
Why is it so scary that someone might actually know your name? It’s just your name. Do you have the same reservations about introducing yourself to a stranger? I don’t see it much differently than that.
I’m not sure why you’re afraid of using your real name on the internet. I can’t fathom what you think might happen to you if you did.
Nothing stopping you from using a fake name either. My girlfriend did when she first started using it. Now she has two accounts, one fake one real. It’s not really a big deal. Nobody has assassinated her yet, fingers crossed!
I don’t give my full name when I first meet someone unless it’s in a business setting; does anyone? And like I said, it’s not them just knowing my full name, it’s the other information, such as my date of birth, that goes with it.
Have you noticed that no one on the SDMB ever uses their real name in their posts? If someone with the SDMB username Doper refers to her husband, she’ll usually call him DoperHubby, or something similar.
I use my real name on Facebook because my Facebook friends are people I know in real life. You don’t generally meet someone for the first time on Facebook–these are people who already know your name.
I have never gotten friend requests on Facebook from people who I didn’t know in some way (sometimes it’s a bit tenuous, such as “I sat next to you in 9th grade science class,” which is why I keep my high school yearbook next to my computer now.) This was not the case with Myspace, where I got strangers asking to be my friends and spam all the time.
If you don’t accept someone as your friend, and your privacy settings are set correctly, all they can see is your name, your picture, and your friend list (I think you can even be more restrictive than that, too).
I think you can hide your birthdate. Many people I know have hidden their birth year. You can also just not answer many questions…leave “workplace” and “hometown” and “marital status” blank if you want to.
The crux of the issue is that on Facebook you already know these people if they don’t already know your birth date and full name then they probably aren’t very good friends anyway. And the search settings at their most open only allow people to see your name, where you’re from and a small profile picture- but you can remove your self entirely from the search listings - and then only you can add friends.
There may be an element of risk but no more then walking out of your front door, and you can just click ignore all invites from certain applications if you want. Oh and private messages are probably most of my interaction on Facebook, the wall is just for quick stuff or things that are generally public anyway, like birthday messages.
I would like to point out that I do not work for Facebook and that if you don’t want an account then don’t get one. However if you think you would find one useful but security concerns are stopping you, they shouldn’t.
There are many reasons facebook was aimed at Uni students though, and is still probably best suited to them
- Is that we’re cheap and it’s a free way of keeping in contact.
- We move back home or to different countries more regularly then people with full time jobs which often involves changing phone numbers and stuff.
- Group conversations are easier, so threads and stuff are managed more easily then with email in my opinion.
- Events, events are a god-send when it comes to planning, lets you tell everyone coming to a party changes at the last minute. If you’re doing this kinda crap 3 times a week its a lot easier then contacting individuals, also for directions you simply post them once and every one has access - no “I lost the text” or “I deleted the email” simply write directions or add google maps.
- Meeting lots of new people, you start a new course you can add all the people you talk to meaning that if you need to collaborate, or need help or simply a reminder of deadlines you’re bound to know someone with the answers. It’s a lot less personal then phones, and again, easier for mass communication.
Well those are my reasons, others have explained their own above, but if none of those apply to you maybe you simply don’t need an account?
But the SDMB is a public message board. The only people on Facebook who can see anything interesting about me are people I’ve selectively made friends, and apart from one who is a doper, they are all either family, work colleagues, or old school friends. Facebook wouldn’t work very well if everyone used pseudonyms. For one, whenever you got a friends request you wouldn’t know who’d sent it, for another you wouldn’t know who anyone was to send friends requests to! Facebook is, for most people, about real world friends and aquaintances staying in touch via the internet, they already know who you are they just want an easier way to keep in contact.
In addition to all that, lets say that you know my name is Ray Colgate, what exactly is it that you will do with that information that is a threat to me?
Edit: I’ve removed the birthdate from my hypothetical after checking exactly what information is available to a non-friend. It is a full name and a profile picture, that is all.
Thanks for this thread, Sapo, as I wonder the same thing. Friends have invited me to join and I always ignore the requests, but feel bad about it.
FWIW, my husband opened a Facebook account pretty much for the same reason. He says it is no problem as he basically ignores it.
You could get a crazy guy look you up in your local phone book and call you in the middle of the night demanding to know why you aren’t selecting his oracularities for the digest.
There’s a reason my Oracle Bio hasn’t been updated in ten years.
My son and grandsons pressured me to get a facebook account, and it was nice for about an hour while I looked at some new pictures of the kids. I don’t really see any benefits to it (other than quick access to new images of the grandkids), but then again I just don’t think of going there and looking at anything.
I guess I’m a privacy nut - I was extremely uneasy using my real name, and of course I omitted my birthday and picture. It seems to be safe though - my husband (pressured by his friends to join) says he searched for me on facebook and didn’t find me, so that’s good. On the other hand, I was pretty freaked out when I first joined and a whole bunch of “potential friends” popped up. The common denominator in these potential friends? They all work for the same company I do. I did not include employment information in my profile so I assume facebook derived it from my IP address. I don’t like that - I REALLY don’t like that.
I took my Facebook down mainly because I think of it as the new Myspace (highly unprofessional). I have a Friendster account with no info on it, but that has my picture, and a LinkedIn account, which is the first thing that pops up when you type in my name. I’m keeping the LinkedIn and the Friendster because I’ve heard recruiters now google you and check to see if you manage your online networking in a professional manner and a lack of any signals that you’re out of touch.
My sister refuses to put up any of them because she’s a psychiatrist and she says she really doesn’t want to be very google-able by her patients.
On a separate note, I just found that I was getting really competitive with people from a long time ago, and that I was getting requests from people from my past that I know are just checking up on me to see what I did with my life. It was useful in the sense that I found a few old friends who got their MBAs at places I’m interested in and I plan to write to them this fall-but it was sort of irritating seeing how many of my old high school classmates are in the same profession currently, the comparing and the snarky little emails back and forth etc. etc…
Although it was pretty interesting noting that my old debate partner is marrying an Indian girl that kind of looks like me and my sister. I knew it! 
I still haven’t gotten on Facebook because I’m not interesting enough as a person to be constantly posting what I’m doing at the moment, such as “Lucky is eating toast.” “Lucky is going to the mall to buy pants.” “Lucky is watching ‘The Suite Life on Deck’ with her kid. Again.’”
I don’t normally use my real name on the Internet, but even without Facebook my real name is ALREADY on the Internet for all to see. I’m listed under staff on the website for the place where I work, there are a couple of local news articles where my name is mentioned, I’m on a list of students who were inducted into a particular honor society, I’m in online white pages listings, etc. And that’s just instances of my name that actually refer to me. There are over 3,000 Google hits on my first+last name, and the first three pages of results are references to other people who share my name. Searching just on Facebook there are over 150 users with my same name, and my last name is not particularly common.
I care about my privacy, but one more listing for “Jane Doe” on Facebook doesn’t make any difference. It’s not a secret that people with this name exist.