I've found Facebook to be a great product for me. I went to an international school, and many of my high school friends are spread across the world. I'm not super-close with all of them, but close enough to want to know what they're up to (and visa-versa). Facebook allows that (as do many other things - which I also use).

I've also got a lot of friends who purposefully stay off Facebook for the same reasons espoused in the posts on HN, and I understand that reasoning too.

The only minor irritation I have is that a lot of events that go on in my city, or that my friends host, use Facebook events. I'll occasionally get a complain from a non-facebook using friend that they didn't get invited to ______, and it's usually just because they weren't on Facebook and the host doesn't know them well enough to go out of their way to invite them.

And the person not invited usually responds along the lines of "well, apparently the party host is not a close enough friend to SMS or email or call me, so whatever," That might or might not be entirely true.. but either way, why are you complaining about not being invited?! Because you are using Facebook as some gauge of friendship, and now you feel this friendship isn't a 'deep' as you thought it was because they don't want to SMS you individually?

Quite frankly, I love being invited to things by far acquaintances, because it just gives me an opportunity to meet new people. I don't use Facebook friending/event invites as any metric for the depth of a relationship. Just to find new stuff to do.