With the news that phone calling is coming to Twitter and video chat is coming to Facebook I started wondering whether social networking is starting to get out of hand. While social networking is all well and good it used to just be a means of keeping in touch with people you once knew and for some meeting new people.

Given its initial limitations on what you could do it pretty much only entailed a quick update and having a short read on what people were up to. This meant that it didn’t really intrude on the important things that needed to get done. Then came all the added extras to get a leg up on the competition, like games and quizzes and a whole load of stuff that people spend time on that can be, at times, quite ridiculous.

I remember when Facebook came out. I joined up because it was pretty much a clean, streamlined version of Myspace. I could just add my friends and old schoolmates etc and get a quick look at what was going on or what was coming up. This was great and was exactly what it was designed for. It allowed me to network with my friends. While I do still use Facebook and Twitter I use them only as a means of quick info and have kept away from all the other apps that come with. I check my invitations from time to time and notice that it is always mostly filled with invitations to stupid little apps that people have used and done the obligatory ’send to everyone’. So what is the need for Facebook to include video chat? To be honest I don’t really understand Facebook’s need for a standard online chat feature.

I know of so many people who just ’quickly’ log on to have a ’quick check’ and end up spending and insane amount of time doing random things even when they have a bunch of things that should be taking priority waiting until their Facebooking is done. I’m sure quite a few uni students will reduce their stress by quite a margin if they focussed on what was important and a priority first.

I’ll admit that Twitter still is keeping to its original design of quick, limited updates it seems like phone calling doesn’t really tie in with that even if calls are limited to 2 minutes as they have originally planned. It makes me wonder why a normal phone call now wont suffice or even talking to somebody face to face. I am happy that Twitter has kept its features to a minimum and what it originally set out to do but if it tries to expand outside that we would just end up with another Facebook or Myspace.

While I’m in no way saying that this will cause another financial meltdown, I fear that the future will not live up to its full potential if people put all their time and effort into messing about on social networking sites instead of placing the necessary importance and priority on work/uni/crap that actually needs to get done. I really hope I’m proven wrong on this. Let me know your thoughts.