OK, I've had some time to fool around with facebook, and I don't get it. What's the big deal? I found some old college friends, but other than that I'm kind of stumped as to what the site is supposed to be used for. It's kind of the same way I feel about twitter. I mean, I've got my blog, for anybody who wants to know what I'm up to lately, and facebook strikes me as just another website that I'll have to waste time updating. Am I just too old to grok the appeal of sites like this?
The purpose of these sites is to make money for the geeks who own them. So much of what is done is pointless anyway, just recreational. But any such site can be awfully beneficial to a lot of people.
Dan--I think there is a little more to Facebook than just to enrich its owners. Several people on my web site have steered me to both publishers I should contact, and to several books I should read. It also has probably sold a couple of my books thru indirect means (no, I have no emperical evidence on this--just a gut feeling).
If I continue to write books (and that's a given) and they do well with reviews, I suspect being on this site is going to see more books being sold. And let's face it---sooner or later it is quite possible for a lit agent or big named editor to come along and become interested (this last point is just as viable as sending out random letters to agents and editors and letting them stack it on top of the thousands of others waiting in the slush pile).