[beagle3]

You are profoundly naive if you believe that is what Facebook is for.

FACEBOOK IS A TOOL TO MAKE YOU (the user, their product) MORE MARKETABLE TO ADVERTISERS (the customers).

By knowing everything about you, they can get better rates from advertisers. Everything else, like photo sharing, and the ability to send messages to other people, or check into place, is designed to get more info about you, and to make sure you don't wander off Facebook to their competitors (if you didn't have picture sharing, you'd be using Picasa or Flicker more -- and that might threaten facebook).

[aloneinkyoto]

I was talking about Facebook the tool, i.e. how it is actually being used by people. Not Facebook the business model, which I agree with you is exactly as you describe, but is something completely different and separate from how it is perceived and used by ordinary people.