I've made the plunge and signed up for Facebook, and added a few friends from home and work. Now that I've used the app for a few days, I find I'm kinda creeped out by it: its concepts of relationship are soooooooo naive.
For example: On Facebook, I have one, big bowl of "Friends"; in reality, I have an immediate family, an extended family, close friends, distant friends, colleagues in industry, co-workers, people at shops I frequent...the list goes on and on. There are family members I'm very close with, family members I keep in some touch with, family members I see at holidays, family members I don't speak with, etc. - and that's just Family (ok, admittedly, family is a often a complicated thing).
Perhaps I compartmentalize more than is healthy, but I like to keep my work somewhat separated from my non-work career (to fulfill work confidentiality), and my work significantly separated from my family and friends (because my company is ultimately beholden to the stockholders; not to me). Similarly my set of friends and family members aren't one big blob of people.
I think it comes back to identity: Facebook treats each person as if they have a single, uniform identity/role, yet people have multiple, overlapping roles and identities in life. Taken to the extreme, why should I share with my dry cleaner the same details about my life as I share my wife? - it's absurd.
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