phooey: needy applications

I'm growing increasingly frustrated with needy Web 2.0 applications like Facebook and Twitter.  While both appeal to the short attention span dilettante in me, I'm finding the relative value I get from them does not make up for the work they require.

Someone just put something on my Super Wall?  Lovely.  Someone has noted that they're making a sandwich?  Swell.

In moderation, such non-news is fine.  But neither Facebook nor Twitter are moderate - they ping me with the ferocity of a hyperactive spider monkey throwing pebbles against my car window, and when I don't reply, I am left feeling guilty. . . which is ridiculous.

Or am I just not getting it?  Is the goal of these applications to suck you in and trap you like a patient etherised on a table by combining social indebtedness with "free" debt relief?

It makes me painfully aware that my time is worth more than the value I'm getting for spending it with them.