Real time communications

Over the years I've always prefered real time communications. ie: IRC chat, instant messaging and voip services such as Ventrilo. I think this is a result of being involved in Amateur (ham) radio for most of my life. In fact real time communications over the web caused me to get away from amateur radio these past few years.

The advent of social networking on sites such as Facebook initially caught my interest. After trying them a couple years, I can't maintain a deep interest. The concept of commenting on someones page and waiting anywhere from a few minutes to hours or days for a response is not communicating in my book.

On a number of times I've tried using the real time chat feature of Facebook with friends and relatives and they failed to respond. When asked about it, I get excuses such as I can't think fast enough to know what to say or I can't type good enough to chat. I remind them how well they can carry on a phone conversation and chatting should only be slower in proportion to their typing speed. As far as typing skills are concerned, I'm a hunt and peck typist and manage to carry on good conversations with highly skilled typists. so excuses such as that mean nothing to me. Do you prefer real time communications?