An interesting thing happened upon creating this account... within 48 hours I had 56 friends, of which 25 are past students of mine spanning over 16 years. This is an interesting example in networking/graph theory. This will be used in my Discrete Mathematics course this fall for discussion.
This phenomena evokes several questions, predominately ... "What is so compelling about this technology?" Its appeal is generationally independent; case in point, my grandfather of 92 has his own Facebook page. (Yes, a 92 year old had a page before his grandson, a computer science professor) Watching the posts over the last two days is quite amazing. The cumulative amount of time and effort expended for all these posts is quite significant. Is their an ingrained need for people to "expose" details (at times highly personal) to various layers of their social circle to the sacrifice of their personal privacy? Does this need to share overpower ones need to guard privacy?
Defenders would say "All the information is already out there... so what's the big deal [dad]?" While this may be true, it is all in one place for easy access. This makes data mining a trivial task. How much is your identity worth? Every person needs to ask themselves this question. It is not a single piece of information that is harmful, it is the collection of individual data that creates a digital profile over time that quite possibly provides a leverage to those whom you might not otherwise grant power over you. Remember... information is power and this information will most likely persist indefinitely.