As a facebook non-joiner myself, I find that I miss out on a lot of baby pictures, knowledge of other people's birthdays, and (a few) parties.

I would regard that as a benefit.

That reminds me of another effect: I am thought of as a person that regards missing these things as a benefit!

I have some friends who use FB as their main means of communication. Instead of firing on a quick email to them, I send it on FB.

While it's not my primary means of communications, my Facebook account gets near 0 spam (both literal spam and "mailing lists which are fairly boring but every now and again I should check") which means that while I made everything else in my smartphone just give a little "pop" sound, Facebook messages (and SMSs) actually make a "pring-pring" (more noticeable) sound -- if my Facebook mailbox has something in it, there's a high likelihood it's a real person, needing something real from me (and there's a high likelihood that I want to give them that, since I actually know them...)

My point: It's actually rational to assume FB messages are more valuable, and given people who do that, it's equally rational to send them messages on FB :)

Oh, I agree. Some people just see FB was a means to communicate and don't bother worrying about how cool/uncool it is.

A friend of a friend offered me an opportunity recently for some development. They (who own the business) are big into Facebook and that the the first method of contact that they offered.

It's not a huge money-making opportunity, but it's the first step towards a path I've been wanting to take for quite some time.

It's not that I'm mining Facebook for jobs any more than I mine my phone for jobs... It's that by boycotting it, I cut off a means of contact that others might prefer. (And I could also appear childish or out-of-touch as well.)

Nothing against communicating via Facebook, if that is your thing. But it is definitely not childish to not communicate via Facebook. Boycott is too strong, perhaps, but if you simply see no use for it.

Personally I am just old fashioned in that way, I still run my own email server. I don't feel too happy about my communications belonging to some mega corporation.

Also, I don't like having to log in to FB to get my messages, and in turn to be trackable by all the sites that partner with FB.

That's just my reasons - but I don't boycott it. If somebody messages me on FB, I usually reply. I just don't initiate communication on FB.

For me, it's timely knowledge of friends doing things I might want to join in on, keeping up with a few groups and organizations that post things there, and cheaply signalling my affiliation with just about anything by joining a group named after it.

I also found a great band called "The 21st Century Monads" because I was looking through famous people's profiles, and it's the only music group on David Chalmers' page.