Silly as this may sound, I’m thankful today for Facebook.
My kids are grown, my son is a cop working odd hours, my brothers are both firefighters who work 24 hour shifts, but on different days than each other, and I have more cousins than I can count thanks to huge families on both sides.
Facebook is like a real time newsletter that allows me to keep up with what everyone is doing, see some great (and not so great) jokes, sharing of articles, photos, news etc. I admit I did not like Facebook when I first got mine, but it grew on me. I was a Myspace convert. I’ve since changed Facebook pages as the first one had “fyrwife” in the URL and as that no longer applied I wanted to get rid of it. I still use it as a side account for playing games when I need to add a bunch of ‘friends’ for my ‘family’ in things like Mafia Wars, or fellow farmers in Farmville2. I’m a bit more selective as to who I add on my personal account.
Facebook also allows me to have ‘fan’ pages, which I can use for my businesses to promote or offer specials, and one for my blog page followers.
Recently a college student from church even started a page/group for those who wanted to join in a study of the book of Romans, and my church has a page/group as well, allowing me to reach out for or give comfort and encouragement.
But mostly, I’m just thankful for Facebook for the additioinal ways to keep up with my kids, what they are doing, and share some love and laughter.
Marti Gardner 
I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, but do enjoy it for many of the things you mentioned. I was against it at first out of fear of people being able to spy, but once I figured “delete” and “block” were good features, away went that problem.
There have been people I had lost touch with that I acually wanted to be found by (smile), and to be able to share memories and milestones is precious.