I work at Facebook. I think that social networking unfairly gets a bad rap from many engineers. Maybe this is because many of us view, or viewed, socializing and maintaining friendships as a waste of time. I think that is a mistake. Socializing is something that's a core part of what it is to be human, and Facebook is a tool to help people to do that.
My entire family and many of my friends live in another country. Apart from infrequent Skype calls the only way I can interact with them is via Facebook. I am closer to them now than when I lived an hour's drive away and we communicated by email. The first pictures my parents will see of their grandchildren will be on Facebook. It's awesome to think that I've helped build something that is helping millions of other people in the same way.
Social networking isn't a fad, about sharing cat pictures, or something bored teenagers do. Engineers look at Facebook and see a web site built in PHP with "a nice tech stack". Everyone else sees a way to fulfill their need to connect with people.
I don't want to divert this discussion too far here and obviously you're somewhat ~biased~ by default as an FB engineer, but take this from an engineer that doesn't particularly like FB:
* Friendship for me is something offline, mostly. I don't believe that 'remote friends' make a lot of sense. That's a digital version of pen pals (email?) or collecting trophies from trips around the world. Socializing doesn't happen online for me, 'friends' that I cannot see offline will most probably not make it with me into the future. Facebook is a way to drag those people along that in my world just wouldn't have made it anymore.
* You totally ignored the biggest complaint in this discussion: Sharing stuff with a company that has a less than stellar reputation for respecting privacy. I'd argue that the bad reputation among engineers mostly stems from this issue, not from a weird kind of 'maintaining friends is a waste of time' idea.
That said, I _do_ use FB right now (living in IL, parents and family in DE) to connect with family and I have to admit that this works to some degree. I'd have preferred to do that more privately (diaspora? blogs?), but convenience and ease of use have won here.
My entire family and many of my friends live in another country. Apart from infrequent Skype calls the only way I can interact with them is via Facebook. I am closer to them now than when I lived an hour's drive away and we communicated by email. The first pictures my parents will see of their grandchildren will be on Facebook. It's awesome to think that I've helped build something that is helping millions of other people in the same way.
Social networking isn't a fad, about sharing cat pictures, or something bored teenagers do. Engineers look at Facebook and see a web site built in PHP with "a nice tech stack". Everyone else sees a way to fulfill their need to connect with people.