I suppose it's not surprising that a guy who's fifty-one years old hasn't joined Facebook yet. Frankly, I don't understand what it's for, and I'm afraid if I did understand what it's for it might be yet another tme sink that I don't need. But...
Two important projects, the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) and ScienceDebate2008, now have Facebook groups. I've never visited Facebook, but now I may have to join. Chris Mooney reports that the ScienceDebate2008 Facebook group already has more than 1200 members. I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds like a lot.
I can't provide a link to either of the groups, since I'm not a Facebook member yet. I presume that those of you who are Facebook members know how to find them.Once I've figured out how, I'll report back for any old geezers like me who'd like to join the party.
Come on in, Kent, the Facebook water's great! It's cacophonous at times, for sure, but the networking and community-building opportunities are tremendous. Many nonprofits now have FB groups: for example, NCSE's group has almost 1,000 members; AAAS's group also has almost 1,000 members--and AAAS's group on FB is linked to from the front page of the aaas.org website (which is what AIBS does for its FB group).
AIBS also has a Facebook group, as does the AAAS and the NCSE. Though i must say that i am not fully impressed with facebook's interface, pretend inbox (c'mon - just let me use my own email client already), or lack of (email) updates on group discussions. Facebook expects that you'll be logging into the website regularly to see what is going on.