They offer a service at a price, although you don’t pay any money the real cost is in the information you give them. Everything about you, what you do, what you say. The people you have contact with and what they do and say, the friends they have contact with……and so on.
If you think about it for a bit, it’s not a good thing.
The information you give is entirely up to you. Some people who are personal friends of mine put stuff up on Fb which, for me, comes under the heading of ‘too much information!’, whereas I put up hardly anything at all. Certainly nothing that would be of any real use to anyone else. As to how many friends, I haven’t a clue, and can’t be arsed to find out. Most of those who are actual ‘friends’ are people I know personally, but there are also a lot of pages belonging to bands and artists which give me information and a personal level of contact far closer than the old style of web page, usually maintained by some IT wonk employed by the record label. These days it’s usually the artist themselves posting stuff, which is far more intimate and interesting.
Alison Goldfrapp’s Fb page is brilliant, because she’s a really good photographer, and puts up some very interesting pics. Paper Aeroplanes are another band who are really good at keeping in touch with their fan-base.
Works for me, anyway.