If there’s one thing that annoys me with all this social networking, it’s knowing which friends are on which account and managing the best way to contact them.

In this modern digital age, you’re telling me that I have to remember if the best method of contact for some people is on Facebook, text with some and IM the rest?

Let’s say I’m planning a party for tonight. The best way to tell my mother is text: she doesn’t have a fancy smartphone, so she only checks Facebook when she’s on her laptop and she doesn’t (and may not ever) use an instant message client. So I send a text.

On of my best friends doesn’t text nor does he even has a text message package, so if I text him it will be an inconvenience - who wants unwanted text charges? He doesn’t ever check his Facebook account, but he’s almost always on AIM or Gtalk. So I send him an IM.

Then there’s co-workers - I don’t know their phone numbers (and I’d prefer they didn’t know mine) and who knows if they use Gtalk or AIM. So I go to Facebook and post on their wall or create an invite.

Why can’t all these forms of reaching out to people just be ONE merged form?

Instead of having to mess with Google Voice texts and Gtalk IMs, let’s just make it one thing - combine these services. If I’m texting with my mother when I’m out and about, why can’t I just sit at my computer when I get home and see her texts as IMs on Gtalk? Her contact information is already stored in my contacts, linked to both Gtalk and Voice.

Granted, I have not yet been invited to Google’s newest social networking project Google+ (and any faithful readers or Google itself are free to send any invites my way) but I feel it has a strong potential to bring all these features together and make easy our overly complicated online socialization. It feels as if they are so close but haven’t made the connection yet.

Imagine focusing on the friend and the human interaction rather than the contact handle or path. Focus on the most important matter - communication.