Facebook: Now with Real-Time Stalking!

By Ginger Lennon

April 7th, 2008

As if AOL Instant Messenger and Facebook don’t already consume enough of our attention, The Facebook Blog revealed that they will soon be rolling out Facebook Chat. Similar to GMail’s gTalk Sidebar, when we sign on to Facebook, we will now see a chat bar pop up at the bottom of our browsers. Facebook Chat will allow us to connect with other Facebook users in real-time, as opposed to posting on walls and message boards.

Granted, this application will keep us in “real-time touch” with more people in our social networks than ever before… This however, is not necessarily a good thing. I don’t know about you, but there are about 10 people I chat with on a fairly regular basis on AIM… yet I’m closing in on a solid 700 people within my Facebook network.

Just because we have profiles and have a lot of “friends” on Facebook, doesn’t mean we want everyone to have instant access to our lives. We all saw the backlash Facebook had when the News Feed was launched… Can’t we all just “stalk” each other from the secluded privacy of our living rooms without being hounded on IM?

I am going to have to agree with Mashable on this one, and say that between AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, MSN, Jabber, Skype and MySpace, enough is enough. The more does not always mean the merrier.

Entry Filed under: Entertainment Technology,Social Media