The most useful thing, to me, is that many of my wife’s relatives are on facebook and, since they are spread out over a bunch of countries, this is handy because I can actually keep in touch since this seems to be their preferred mode of contact. Mostly, we exchange messages (so, not much different than email), comment on one another’s photos, post photos, and I like to see what kinds of movies certain people are watching. We also send youtube videos back and forth.

I don’t know how lil green patch is structured, but I am going to guess that a bit of the ad revenue is donated. It reminds me of tht inane website years ago that people were exhorting one another to visit so that you could hit the button that said “buy food” so that you’d feed the hungry. It was revealed later that the amount donated for each click was really low - something like a fraction of a cent. I decided at the time (and I was in grad school so I didn’t have much cash) to just send twenty bucks to Oregon Food Bank instead.