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My nerd rating may be pretty low -- I just ditched my Razr for a smartphone 2 months ago -- but I learned pretty quickly how to block updates from people I want to leave as friends but whose status update behaviors annoy me.

 

It also helps when you go days without checking it.  For the longest time it was simply a convenient conduit to get baby pictures to family.

I have a cell phone that takes pictures only because I could not buy one that didn't take them.  It's nice to be able to make a call from anywhere when you need to, but really I don't have a need for any of the other stuff.

As for FB, like you I am on there mostly because a lot of family photos are posted there and it was a pain to look over my wife's shoulder every time I wanted to see the pictures.  I still don't think that I have friended anyone yet.  A few people from outside my family have found me and sent me friend requests.  I accept most of them.  What do I care, I'm not on there all that much anyway.

What I like most about FB and the others is that they make fantastic contact-management tools.  No longer do I need to maintain an address book of emails and make changes everytime somebody sends me an "I switched to xxmail.com, please update your addressbooks".  Tools like Facebook manage all that stuff for me; all I need to do is remember the person's name.

 

It also happens to be a pretty good way to get the word out about rinky dink marathons.

Add in an Android phone and your life is complete!  All of that contact info from FB ends up (if you wish) in your contact list.  

My nerd rating may be pretty low --

My nerd rating is pretty high, but somehow I still have no Google+ invites??

I agree that FB messaging is not full-featured relative to a true email client.  But I can start a conversation there for 90% of what I need to say, and for the rest I can shift to email.  For example, organizing runs or meals or nights with friends or babysitters... etc... FB works fine.

I agree that FB messaging is not full-featured relative to a true email client.  But I can start a conversation there for 90% of what I need to say, and for the rest I can shift to email.  For example, organizing runs or meals or nights with friends or babysitters... etc... FB works fine.

Part of my frustration may be unique in that work forces me to use a Blackberry, I do not have admin rights and cannot get to and communicate via FB with it.  So someone FB messages me...I see the notification and message -- or part of it -- on my BB.  So I respond via email...if I can, as I don't have everyone on there...and then they go back and reply to me again via FB.  It is cumbersome.

Now I have to carry two phones, work and personal -- argh -- but I have the FB app on my personal phone so that has simplified things.  Perhaps one day they will get out of the IT dark ages and open it up to load onto personal phones so I can go back to one.

The irony is that while our own IT is outdated and behind I must keep up with IT advances so I don't personally become a dinosaur in certain aspects of my job.

MTA:  Occasionally checking personal email at work is no biggie.  I am always worried that they may be tracking FB access to some extent.

Your expectations are too high.  This is what my phone looks like:

 

 

 

No apps for me.  At all.  When I get on FB to send a message, it is using a browser on a real computer...

You and I have very different jobs.  There were at least 10-12 days last month where I was on the road and had no easy internet access via computer for most or all of the day.  The limited functionality of the Blackberry has been a significant liability in other situations as well, although it was a big improvement over the prior expectation of me being able to do my job on the road with absolutely no phone and only extraordinarily limited internet access.

MTA:  Have you ever TRIED to use Blackberry's browser?  It's the worst one I've ever encountered, and about 30% of sites won't even load.  A lot that will don't work correctly.

I have this exact issue too.  It makes me a bit anxious to be disconnedted, mostly because I know emails are piling up.  But most emails don't have to be addressed the second they come in and can wait until I reconnect once I hit the hotel room.

 

I guess I could pay for Boingo, but the value proposition typically ain't right for me.

Unfortunately it often creates significant business issues for me to be out of touch.  If I am out working until 10-11pm and need to be at it again at 5-6am there is little time in the hotel room as well.

In a prior position I was able to fight for and receive a 3G card that policy did not allow me to have, because I was able to point to a single instance for a VP where if I had not been fortunate enough to be in an airport terminal that had free WiFi (this was back when it was much rarer) he would have been screwed because I could not have delivered on an urgent issue for him for another 6 hours; delivering on that one request more than paid for years of 3G card access.

Expectations have changed as the world has sped up, unfortunately.  It's a bit silly sometimes.

I am not a techie of any sort but I do worry about keeping up.  If you stop paying attention for a couple years it is easy to lose touch and it is much harder to catch up, which is why something like Google+ I would at least play with to understand.  For example within 4 years of being out of doing hands-on molecular biology and biochemical research the whole toolkit advanced significantly and IT became a much bigger part of it (image-based whole cell screening, genomics, proteomics, etc).  I recently have had to put a concerted effort into filling that gap, and it is not pleasant.