My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to find out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had political, religious, and social views vastly different than my own.

A large number of them also apparently spend what I would consider a very unhealthy amount of time on Facebook posting angry, racist messages that just seem to continually make them angrier and more racist as they feed off of one another. I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people because of the things they put on Facebook. It's like, they log on to the site and all filters go off.

I've found that with the exception of 2 or 3 people who only seem to communicate with the outside world via their Facebook account, everyone that I follow whom I genuinely want to keep up with are ones I was already talking to through other channels.

Myself and most of my friends use Skype quite extensively for keeping in touch. Others email and use Google Talk.