[brosirmandude]

Honestly, public & private FB groups. Groups dedicated around specific subjects (mostly related to my career) have been some of the most influential places for learning, networking, building relationships that I've been able to call on later.

FB groups are king because:

1. Everyone is already there. 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part).

Other areas to learn/network and ask dumb/advanced questions exist, but to "community" vibe in FB groups is unrivaled.

My FB feed is almost nothing but groups posts. I've hidden/unfriended most people I don't care about and no one I've kept really posts to their actual pages much these days anyway.

I really wish Groups was a separate app. I'd keep that and messenger.

I realize my privacy on fb, and likely around the whole web is the tradeoff for this but unfortunately that's what's required to stay on. The advancements I've made in my career and personal life directly & indirectly due to the FB groups I'm in are definitely worth it, and likely would not have happened without the existence of FB groups.

[AndrewOMartin]

Absolutely agree about the importance of unfollowing all but the very highest signal/noise ratio friends, which includes very interesting posters, and certain family members for whom nothing should be missed!

Add to that some aggressive ad blocking, element zapping, prioritisation of the notification window over the news feed, and use of the basic mobile site [http://mbasic.facebook.com/] and you've got an actually pleasant experience.

Three great features of the basic site are i) predictable middle click behaviour of links, ii) no infinite scroll so you get a very clear indication of when you're about to do more than 'just glance at the top', iii) audio/video links are to raw media files .

[ValentineC]

> 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part).

Why would you prefer this, versus anonymity-by-default on somewhere like Reddit?

[babygoat]

Networking and being anonymous don't go together very well.

[newscracker]

Counterpoint — this depends on the area of interest and the people. That networking and being "anonymous" don't go well is not necessarily true always, and need not be true always. One can have a handle/username/name without revealing one's real name to everyone on Facebook, and yet reveal one's real name through other means (out of band communication) to specific people at specific times for specific needs.