Anyone else had a facebook account then closed it?

I recently took myself off facebook. The main reason being is that I can't really see the point of it yet it becomes fairly compulsive to check it and keep it up to date. By the time I closed it down, I had around 170/180 friends.

But when it came to telling people that I was closing my account and giving them details on how to contact me in the life beyond, it really boiled down to a list of 20-30 people. They were folks that I had a genuine and realistic interest in hearing from and seeing from time to time. The vast majority of those people were folks I see fairly often anyway.

What, if anything, is the real point of facebook?