Whenever I'd try to visit a news link on facebook that one of my other friends had read (and had it autopost to the timeline) it would always try to get ME to sign up as well. I'm really suspicious of that stuff, so I always refused it and either decided I didn't care about the article or used google to find it on my own. I was always paranoid I'd click on some article that would actually turn out to be, I don't know, the secret sex lives of snails or something, and I'd be really embarrassed by it. (Why does a news application need access to all my personal info, anyway? I'm not agreeing to that!!)

It's great to hear that newspapers are starting to reject it. I really hate the idea of facebook becoming its own walled garden affair. Especially because there's no way to tell wtf is ever going on it, it doesn't show me half of what I want to see...so now I barely use it and have just left it up for party invites and all the nontech people who act like you're asking them to get a tooth extracted if you expect them to actually e-mail instead of sending a fbook message :/

I think I'm a "tech person" by most definitions, and I still like using fb messages vs. email in a lot of cases. It's a great directory service (I still don't have a good address book for mutt), shows presence (which is missing from email), and the integrated-IM is even better than google (because it doesn't end up sending messages to my desktop if I'm on my phone, etc.)

Yeah, everyone's different, plus it depends a lot on the situation (short message vs. long message, importance, is there an attachment, etc). Most of the people I know who insist on facebook messages -only- are more the type that can't figure out how to even open a zip file.

Also, a lot of people I know got hit in a round of account deletions and got majorly screwed over because they were conducting all their freelance business through fb messages (and then had no way to communicate with their clients, since neither of them had each other's e-mail). Because of that, it just feels more unsafe to me, like I could lose all my data at any time. Plus they keep doing weird things like deciding what posts I want to see from my friends (I'd like to see all of them by default?? if they are annoying then I will change it), constantly resetting my news feed to "top stories!" and etc. I guess I don't trust them not to mess up the messaging too and then maybe I'll miss a message from someone about something that's really important.

I agree that it works fairly well as a directory. I wish there were something like facebook that wasn't facebook, but none of the alternatives seem to have caught on quite as well yet. (also--I hope my original post didn't insult you or anyone else reading it on here, that wasn't my intention at all.)