Is @gmail.com somehow more distinguished?

To me yes.

In a professional image scale I would definitively rank facebook.com less professional than gmail.com but maybe slightly better than WorlOfWarcraft.com

Is this the 2010 equivalent of wearing a jacket and tie? It seems we worked to escape the idea that conformity to arbitrary behaviours was more important than merit, only to replace them with a fresh set of meaningless distinctions.

yes and we'll now be the generation who cannot seem to reconcile themselves with the newer and supposedly more meaningless distinctions until the next ones come along.

I think so. It seems more neutral at least. I like facebook for whatever it is but not for professional use.

What do you mean "not for professional use"?

For most professional use, meaning "work", I use work's e-mail system (usually based on Exchange, but I guess that depends on where you work). If I apply to companies, do you think they really care what your address is?

I do some of the interviewing duties at work, and I can tell you my eyes pretty much skip over the e-mail part of the resume. HR needs it to e-mail them "your interview is on the 10/10 at 10:10am", but I doubt the HR person really cares about the address beyond copy'n'pasting it.

(Mind you, if I got work e-mail from a personal address, I would regard this as unprofessional behavior, but it doesn't matter if it's @gmail.com or @faceboook.com)

@gmail.com is no @jdoe.net, but imho it's probably one of the most respectable free email domains.

Hi, one quick question: If you use @jdoe.net because it looks more professional, what would you use for the local part of the address? Does e.g. [email protected] look better than [email protected]? I'm thinking when used for job applications and such.

[email protected] is what I'd use, or if you have an uncommon last name like me and it's available as a domain name, [email protected] and a blog at john.doe.net.

What is @jdoe.net a reference to?

John Doe

If you use @facebook.com You basically share your profile(at least profile picture)

At the risk of sounding flippant: So? Isn't your public facing Facebook profile picture easily discoverable anyway? If you're submitting, for example, a college application, they already have way more information on you anyway. The same goes for a job application.

don't you think people would google you anyway? that's the first thing i do when i receive an email from someone i don't know or a possible client. well at least before i started using rapportive.