I agree with you. I am now living in Canada, having moved from the UK. Facebook makes it much more practical for me to keep in touch with friends and family across the globe. Sure there is skype or email, or I could start a blog or whatever. But latter 2 just take too much time, and the last one is a one way process. People get to spend small amounts of time, or nearly nothing if they are just uploading a picture from their phone. Some/most of the time, these pictures would most likely not get shared, it may just be my nieces playing in the park, hardly breaking news worth emailing me about.
With this in mind, the only benefit of the group I can think of was that it helped gather “background information.”
The problem I see with a lot of people, esp in North America (or this may just be my personal experience) is they add EVERYBODY to Facebook. Just met you, "hey, you on Facebook?" whereas I only have people that I know: family, friends, ex-collegues, old school friends. If you have 800 "friends" on Facebook then you're going to be inundated with garbage. You also have the option of "spring cleaning" your friends list. Haven't spoken to you in a long time, unfriend. I don't understand this thing where you add strangers to your social circle, there's a lot of personal information on there.
With this in mind, the only benefit of the group I can think of was that it helped gather “background information.”
The problem I see with a lot of people, esp in North America (or this may just be my personal experience) is they add EVERYBODY to Facebook. Just met you, "hey, you on Facebook?" whereas I only have people that I know: family, friends, ex-collegues, old school friends. If you have 800 "friends" on Facebook then you're going to be inundated with garbage. You also have the option of "spring cleaning" your friends list. Haven't spoken to you in a long time, unfriend. I don't understand this thing where you add strangers to your social circle, there's a lot of personal information on there.