[danieldon]

    People know more about the lives of their friends and
    family than they ever have before

Wow. I couldn't disagree more. Event notifications are probably the only thing that is substantially more useful in facebook as far as I can tell. Aside from that, the only additional knowledge I've gained from facebook is that a handful of people who I barely remember from high school really like reposting stuff from r/pics. My family has been active on facebook for years, but it's had nothing remotely close to a revolutionary impact on how we communicate.

[natrius]

There's a ton of stuff that goes on in our lives that don't merit notifying everyone about directly, but might merit posting a status or picture to Facebook. It reduces the friction involved in sharing information. I don't think I ever would've seen as many pictures of the random events in the lives of my family and friends without Facebook. That's valuable to me. I also have a much better idea of the interests of acquaintances and people I haven't seen in a while since the links they share shed some light on that.

Of course more direct communication still happens outside of Facebook. I think that "random nonsense" is more valuable to people that you're assuming. Presumably, people wouldn't use Facebook if they didn't find it valuable.

[danieldon]

    I don't think I ever would've seen as many pictures of 
    the random events in the lives of my family and friends 
    without Facebook

That hasn't been my experience at all. Seriously. Savy people use/used flickr, others used Myspace, and handful used photobucket, others use/used awful photo sharing sites like kodak's and others use/used email. In my experience, most of the additional volume of photos on my wall are from people I should probably defriend since I barely know who they are.

    I think that "random nonsense" is more valuable to 
    people that you're assuming

It seems to me, both by looking at my own wall and what people post online, that the nonsense is at most a simple diversion, just like many other diversions that exist and have existed for years. Despite the fact that many of my friends and family members are productive people who are well-known in their respective fields, I have yet to see anything of any substance actually occur on facebook. The closest thing to actual substance in that regard would be events. And the computer illiterates? The volume hasn't changed, they just post their stuff to facebook rather than CCing everyone in their address book 1-3 times a day.

[natrius]

Photo sharing isn't new, but tagging people in photos is, as is being able to effortlessly access anyone's photos without having to figure out where they are and find some link in an old email or something along those lines. I'm not arguing that Facebook has been particularly innovative, though they have been in some cases. My argument is that their product has changed the way people interact with each other, and that's easy to see.