Michael Arrington’s post both highlighting and lamenting Facebook Chat   demonstrates a secondary function of Chat- it helps reinforce the social graph.

In his post, Arrington complains that his 5000 “friends” make Facebook Chat unmanageable. While it may not be the point of the service, we’ll guess Facebook isn’t disappointed. Facebook has always been about real connections, not anonymous networking. As services become more interactive through different products- applications, chat, etc- it becomes more important for users to have their online list reflect their real list, to avoid clutter and confusion.

It’s bad for Mike Arrington. But Chat might be very good for the future of Facebook.