@Kg_Creative appeared to agree and @shiftingbalance had a few wise words to share on the subject. So, a few days later and dozens of Facebook status updates complaining about the site running slowly, I got to thinking about this again, and, in particular, the tweet from @shiftingbalance asking, what does the user get from Facebook and how does this align with Facebooks own goals?

Personally I don't use Facebook for business, just for pleasure. Because of that I want to be able to read my friends Status Updates easily (which is done by filtering out the Latest News - I am not interested in who has the biggest farm). I also like the photo experience, whereby, on occasions like last weekends hockey Play off Final with fans from all over the country visiting, we can easily share all of our photos of the event.

I love the geo tagging feature (check-ins), purely so friends can see where each other are (SMS to find out where to meet is SO old fashioned!).

Well surely Facebooks own goals are to make money. They align this with what the user gets, because, the more each individual user uses Facebook, the more data Facebook collects (which don't forget it owns). So, they support developers with their API and 'open' graph API (which is very closed), encourage users to participate more.

Of course, more participation means bigger server loads (when did Facebook EVER cope with their pace of growth?). In return, we get highly targeted ads, which, personally, I have long since stopped noticing, and have to put up with the fact that every new release introduces new 'social' features (now always 'on' by default). Oh, and the occasional downtime, when the site is too slow to use, which, considering it's the only time I iron, is no bad thing!

So, to answer @shiftingbalance's question, what do YOU get from Facebook, for either business OR pleasure?