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Google has been in the news recently with its latest bid to rival Facebook in the social media stakes.

The company behind the world's most popular search engine has launched a new social networking site, Google+. It hasn't been rolled out globally yet and only a small group of people have been invited to try it out, but many testers have reported its group video chat function a triumph.

Just over a week after its launch, Facebook announced its own video chat feature in partnership with Skype, the software application that's been at the forefront of the video call market for several years.

Whilst Google+ allows up to ten users at a time to make video calls, called Hangouts, Facebook is only offering one-to-one chat, although its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted that they may introduce other 'premium' Skype features in the future.

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Yet with this new focus on an electronic form of face-to-face chat, I find myself wondering if the world of communication is slowly coming round full circle? For all the photos, links and funny statuses, perhaps users are finally starting to miss interacting with other human faces.

It's clear, though, that in order to keep people logged on to their sites longer, the internet giants need to offer their members everything in one place in the fight for social media dominance.

Read Maggie Shiels' report on Facebook and Skype's video link-up.
For more on social media, go to the WebWise Social Media Basics course.
Read the WebWise guide to setting up webcams.