I used to visit a particular bulletin board site (like this one) daily for many years. A core group of us became friends (visit each other IRL) and we moved the whole thing to FB and it has worked great.
I use FB for my regular group but also because I have a large family that has scattered all over and it allows us all to share our lives, pics of the kids, major life events, etc. The wonderfulness of this cannot be overstated.
Lots of community sites are now on FB. Our HOA has moved to FB, our kids local sports teams, boyscout troop, school, etc. It has become a primary communication mechanism for all kinds of groups we belong to.
The downside of FB:
- The wacky uncle who posts 30 times a day various political propaganda or rants. "Wake up sheeple!!" (Fortunately, FB has a "hide" button which comes in handy!)
- The old flame boyfriend/cyber stalker who repeatedly sends unwanted messages/friend requests
- Ever-evolving privacy settings. Honestly, there are 4 million privacy settings you need to navigate in FB. OK, maybe I exaggerate. Maybe others don't care who/what/why/where sees their FB page, but if you do - good luck adjusting all the settings - friends only, friends of friends, public groups, secret groups, family, public, tags, notifications, etc...jeesh!)
- All the Candy Crush gamers who post weird game-related invites onto your newsfeed (again, fortunately you can hide those posts, too)
- The friends who post a pic of every single meal they eat in a day, every walk they take, every trip to gym, what color shoes they are wearing with their outfit, etc. Oversharing each moment of their day.
- The friends that share daily motivational or philosophical sayings or prayers.
Needless to say, while I use FB daily, I have invested some time in fine-tuning all my settings to block lots of stuff from my newsfeed and my life. Even then, I recently posted a pic of an event that happened many years ago, and was surprised how many people "liked" the pic - and I am not "friends" with them and do not know them (friends of friends of friends??)