Thanks for the agreement on this, yep it scares me and just to think that many businesses are hitting facebook first when search prospective employees (same with most the social networking sites) it keeps personnel departments busy and surely so many people are expressing way too much about themselves and as JP mentioned, the friends of friends of friends thing can blemish you badly.
Keeping track of it all is the hard part, before you know it, you have a freakshow of a friend list.
G3, you are doing it right, keep it to family and close friends and you will be okay, beyond that it gets way too complicated. I like Skype and Ventrilo for having a way to communicate directly. Ventrilo works so much like an intercom, everyone is just a click away and you easily talk worldwide without delays, the big thing negative is you take turns talking.
Skype has many advantages especially if you have good internet speeds, audio quality is superior to ventrilos default settings - both lone and multi-member chatting like a phone is great, you all can talk the same time and leave messages in text format when contacts are away.
I'd rather do forums, pming and voice chatting that any social network - and farming... I live in the garden state, we don't have farms here any more - ugh.