Article is generally correct ... as of 2008. Facebook changed their strategy, though, which is why it doesn't ring quite so true today. The key issue Cory pic

Article is generally correct ... as of 2008. Facebook changed their strategy, though, which is why it doesn't ring quite so true today. The key issue Cory picked up on is that FB2008 had no concept of delineation of social circles -- between actual close friends, family, people who happen to know you, folks who used to be friends ages ago, "frenemies", and people you want to keep tabs on (and vice versa). Nor did it have any concept of different social roles -- e.g. Cory's teacher example. FB2012 is still pretty crap at managing all those aspects of multivalent identity, but at least they've made a few gestures in that direction. Meanwhile, FB2009-FB2012 picked up users on a wave of network externalities; if everyone is on FB and using it for messaging, you can't ignore it. I have an FB account. I hate and loathe FB, but my publishers' marketing folks insist I have an FB account. "But I've got a blog that gets 10-15 thousand daily visitors!" I tell them. "But everyone's on facebook," they chant. So I also have an FB author page with about 2K folks following it (and less than half of them actively reading it), and it forces me to waste time maintaining it and tweaking my privacy settings every time FB create a new privacy leak. This annoys me, and I'm pretty sure it annoys Cory as well, because we both have public personas and the relationship someone with a public persona has with FB is somewhat different to that of J. Random Member of Public. Whether it's truly as bad for everyone else ... shrug.