Facebook is rather shallow by its definition and unfocused when it comes to anything other than social interactions - great for keeping in touch with friends, posting a status update or other titbit about one's life, with all the content that entails.

It's also a vast platform for unstable time-hogs that also latch on to your private data. Then again, Facebook itself is, by design and purpose, a company that profits from encouraging users to reveal as much about themselves as possible.

That, and advertising. So yeah, not a very stable venue for any discussion or debate. Groups, as Mal mentioned, are crap, not being much of a focus for Facebook in the first place - just a way for them to cover yet another social niche and encourage users to stay on for more.

I honestly prefer forums, message boards, email, and even blogs (limited as those are) to Facebook - if anything, I feel that it has a negative rather than a positive effect on one's focus in the 'net. It reduces pretty much everything not advertising-related to a set of social quips, and once you set up enough friends (and added a lot of people you forgot even existed, or never knew about - a good way to keep in touch, I guess), I find that Facebook essentially slices up the time one has available for 'net interactions to things that are smaller, simpler, easier to write without much focus.

There's just more of them. And I'm not sure that that's a very good trade.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon