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  For me, Facebook was not a networking tool. Facebook had
  not provided me with social experiences that would have
  otherwise been lost. Facebook did not connect me with
  people I would have otherwise not been connected with.
  Facebook was wasting countless hours of my time that could
  have been spent on more productive and rewarding endeavors.

Why would you expect Facebook to do that for you? It just a tool, it enables but you must create something meaningful with it. I have a paper and a pen, I don't complain that they don't write a nice poem or a novel for me, I have to do it myself.

Create something meaningful with Facebook? The last time I checked, Facebook is not a creative outlet. Sure, you can let your collection of virtual friends know that you despise public transit, and post a few photos - but create something meaningful? I don't think so.

As for your analogy - a paper is quite literally a blank canvas. You can create anything that you can imagine, assuming your talents allow. Facebook, however, is not a blank canvas. Far from it. Facebook confines its users to a predetermined set of rules for their own benefit ($).

Edit: to elaborate on my last point - when was the last time you saw something truly incredible created entirely via Facebook? Something absolutely amazing that just blew your mind. Please let me know. I'm ready to be educated.

While Facebook may not be a "creative" outlet, at least not in the common definition of "creative", it can still be useful. I co-founded of a non-profit, and we do most of our organization, event planning, and networking through Facebook. It's been incredibly useful to get the word out, not just about our organization in general, but also to spread word about specific events we hold and other organizations we support.

Have we done anything particularly creative using just Facebook? No, not really, but we have helped gather support for local artists and musicians, who do do creative things. As rimantas noted, Facebook is just a tool. It can be a waste of time [1], but that doesn't mean it's always a waste of time.

[1]: A pen and paper can be a waste of time as well. Just look at all the people doodling during lectures.

A tangent on doodles. Apparently doodling has been shown to be a mental self-defence mechanism. By engaging some small part of the mind in a boring situation it enables you to continue paying attention at the same time rather than check out completely into a daydream.

Wired article summary with citation of the research paper: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/doodlerecall/

Create something meaningful with Facebook? The last time I checked, Facebook is not a creative outlet

Then you're not using it right. For me, Facebook is absolutely a creative outlet-- it is a blogging service aimed at a limited audience of readers, i.e., my friends.

Furthermore: all genres have limitations; that's what makes them genres. There are predetermined sets of rules for almost every type of creative endeavour.

As for your final question: why does created entirely via Facebook come into it? Facebook, like all good communication channels, includes citationality. You might as well say that YouTube cannot be used as a creative medium, because the videos were not created purely within Youtube.

My sister recently posted an old photo with herself, some friends and me on it. For a few hours all those people who often haven’t seen each other in years met in the comments.

It seems obvious to me that a service like Facebook is useful and desirable. The specific implementation has much I don’t like but the concept is great.

Perhaps the conclusion is that Facebook is not intended to be a networking tool, or a replacement for a real life -- it is simply a place/way to share online experiences with your real-life friends. AFAIK, it doesn't pretend to be anything else.

One point that I am trying to convey here is that experiences are not being shared on Facebook, real-life friends or not.

Let's go with photos as an example, since they are a pretty integral part of Facebook. I love taking photos while on vacation. I take photos for two reasons: to reminisce at some point in the future, and to share my experiences with friends and family... even if those photos convey just a fraction of the real-life experience of the vacation. When I return from vacation, how do I share all of these photos with friends? Facebook, of course - it's easy, convenient, and everybody is already connected. As great as it seems, I somehow feel absolutely terrible after sending off so many emotion-packed photographs into the endless abyss that is Facebook. I feel empty and unsatisfied. I know that these photographs, displayed so carelessly upon lifeless white background, will never convey the experiences that I had. It's just not a natural form of expression.

In olden times, people would get their vacation photos made into slides, invite their friends over, and bore everyone to death with a slideshow that didn't convey the experiences they had. Facebook is way better.

Yes, but now that experience of being locked in a room and bored to death is pieced up and spread throughout every day of your life; album by album.

You know, I find that I trim people down not so much according to how much I care about them as how interesting they are. Boring people I don't have a real connection to get deleted, but interesting people I don't have a connection to I follow.

I did the same purging of random Facebook 'acquaintances' when I graduated (2009). Then even a year later I was able to trim that 140-150 down to about 80. I also deleted all the random people I had lost touch with from high school who were no longer relevant to me, as since they were added we hadn't bothered to communicate.

I realized a lot of people on Facebook are there to collect friends like it's a status symbol. I really didn't like having college friends, coworkers, professors, high school buddies, employers, random celebrities/bands all lumped into one list together, there needs to be a way too separate these groups.

>there needs to be a way to separate these groups

I was on Facebook when there were only a few schools on it, and it was very useful and very relevant. Because there were no other schools on it, I was only friends with friends from college and there were certainly no high schoolers or parents on it; you had to have a university address.

Facebook essentially got to where they were because that privacy made it awesome, and then promptly lost the very thing that made people trust them with their data to begin with, which was a limited user base.