[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.