Yeah, everyone's different, plus it depends a lot on the situation (short message vs. long message, importance, is there an attachment, etc). Most of the people I know who insist on facebook messages -only- are more the type that can't figure out how to even open a zip file.

Also, a lot of people I know got hit in a round of account deletions and got majorly screwed over because they were conducting all their freelance business through fb messages (and then had no way to communicate with their clients, since neither of them had each other's e-mail). Because of that, it just feels more unsafe to me, like I could lose all my data at any time. Plus they keep doing weird things like deciding what posts I want to see from my friends (I'd like to see all of them by default?? if they are annoying then I will change it), constantly resetting my news feed to "top stories!" and etc. I guess I don't trust them not to mess up the messaging too and then maybe I'll miss a message from someone about something that's really important.

I agree that it works fairly well as a directory. I wish there were something like facebook that wasn't facebook, but none of the alternatives seem to have caught on quite as well yet. (also--I hope my original post didn't insult you or anyone else reading it on here, that wasn't my intention at all.)