Both video calling and social media have grown in use exponentially throughout the course of the last decade. And, while social media is a much newer phenomenon than video conferencing and calling (which have been around since before the 1980s in one form or another) the two technologies are starting to mesh together in fascinating ways that have large ramifications for millions of users down the road of communication technology.

Thwarted Expectations

In part, the mixing of video and social media is going slower than was expected by many people. Video conferencing itself has not taken off as thoroughly as it could have and calling applications such as Skype, Tango mobile and their social media embedded counterparts are all still in what could easily be described as a highly immature state of development at best.

In a case of just one example: it was thought for quite some time that Skype's mobile video calling services application would easily replace many telephone and cellular calling systems in popularity. It has not. Additionally, despite the growth of this and competing services like tango (which now boasts more than 100 million users) the vast majority of communication over social networks and in general is through phones, cell phones and written chat systems.

Social Video Calling Problems

Part of the problem lies in implementation; many video calling and conference calling services require a bit more than what the easy to download free services like Skype, Tango and Intercall offer for most consumers. When it comes to social media connectivity, the built-in video conferencing and calling apps are too clunky for most people who simply prefer to send a series of messages back and forth or text each other.

Another burden to cross is the fact that for many millions of users, simply getting the hang of internet text communications platforms available through social media is burden enough and thus leads to a strong unwillingness to go even further in also accepting the currently more complicated process of talking by video.

Finally, we've got technical problems that have been getting in the way of meshing video calling and social media up to now. In many cases, the variability in connection speeds between two callers leads to constantly fuzzy video, frequently choppy audio and numerous dropped calls. This has been an occasional problem not only for stand-alone video calling services like Skype, but also for the build in video conferencing attachments that Facebook and Google+. Yet another technical problem with social media based video calling -and this is a big one-has been the fact that it's simply not easy to do.

Sending a message through Facebook, or a tweet on Twitter takes just seconds, and in both cases the message or tweet can be distributed to dozens, hundreds or even thousands in the same time frame. With video, this has always been a problem up to now; sending a video request takes time, requires a call, requires both parties to have a coinciding moment of free time for chat and requires a minimal but nonetheless slightly longer effort than text related communication needs to be completed effectively.

This is the ultimate problem with social media based video calling, and it's slowly changing for the better. Once it does, video calling will take off like a rocket.

New Advancements

For one thing, the simple fact that all major social networks have started to integrate video calling with their general chat platforms is a great forward advancement and a good sign of the future. It lays down a sound infrastructure for making video really explode as soon as some of the above-mentioned glitches are worked out. Facebook already has an existing, app based video calling module inside its chat system, and Google+ has also built a video calling and conferencing platform into its list of communications tools. In the case of the Google tool, up to 10 people can conference with each other at the same time.

And while these above developments are excellent, they are further accentuated by still more important efforts to actually make video calling in social media as quick and efficient as text communications.

Facebook, for example, has been rumored to be developing a much simpler to use video or at least voice calling system for those who have an account and want to talk with others who also have Facebook accounts. Supposedly, they will be partnering with Skype on developing this simplified video chat system.

Beyond these bas developments, the general structure and technological capacity of the internet is expanding daily. Smart phones are becoming more robust than ever in terms of processing and video rendering power, 3 and 4G connections are penetrating deeper into society and the popular growth of the mobile web has created a communications infrastructure that is just perfect for instant video calling between mobile, distributed groups of people.

The primary things missing are the perfection of video's speed, quality and convenience. Once they're settled by major social media players, we'll really see an explosion in video.

(image: video calling / shutterstock)