Facebook launches video chat with Skype

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Facebook launches video chat with Skype

Facebook has teamed up with Skype to launch video chat on the social network, which now has 750 million users – the equivalent of one in nine of the world’s population.




Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, made the announcement and revealed the new user figure during a press conference at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters.

The two companies have teamed up to launch the new highly-anticipated feature which will allow its users to talk to each via video. The feature goes live today.

Facebook has introduced a new ‘call’ button on the site, which people can click on in order to activate the service. The new video call experience is very similar to Skype’s original offering.

Zuckerberg said: We think this is an awesome [partnership]. We are using the best technology for video chat with the best social infrastructure [Facebook].

Tony Bates, the chief executive of Skype, revealed that the two companies have been working together for the last six months.

The video calls are only one-to-one at the moment, but Zuckerberg hinted that group video calls could happen in the future.
Zuckerberg used the press conference to also announce that the site has hit 750 million members, which equates to one in nine of the world’s population. However, he said that was no longer the important metric for the site. Instead he said that the most important metric was how much information each user is sharing every day, which has doubled since a year ago.
Zuckerberg also announced a new group chat feature. More than half of Facebook’s 750 million users have created ‘groups’ of friends. With the new release people can use instant messenger to talk to multiple friends at the same time.
Additionally the company has redesigned its chat tool – making a bigger sidebar for people to see who is online with more ease.
Facebook video chat rolls out to its 750 million users today but will not be available on mobile yet.
 
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Facebook event: live

Live coverage of Facebook's launch of an 'awesome' new product in California today. It's not yet known what Mark Zuckerberg will announce but popular theories suggest that Facebook might be preparing video chat or its long-awaited iPad app.

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Mark Zuckerberg has promised an 'awesome' new product Photo: REUTERS/Norbert von der Groeben

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The launch is widely expected to be a Facebook video chat service. Photo: AP


• Facebook confirms that it now has 750 million users worldwide
• Mark Zuckerberg launches Skype video calling app that works within Facebook
• Facebook messenger now supports group chats

Latest

20.20: At Gizmodo, Andrew Tarantola makes a good point about the strengthening ties between Facebook and Microsoft: "Skype, if you'll remember, was purchased by Microsoft in May for $8.5 billion. This move not only strengthens Facebook's own feature list but also strengthens the budding FB/MS alliance (what with Facebook's recent Bing integration and all) against their common Google enemy."

20:00: So does Facebook video calling work? Well, my first experiment went awry: I set up the app then tried my call and got an error message. I tried again and got no response whatsoever. A third call, albeit one with someone who is in the same room, went fine, though it was delayed while they went through the setup process. I imagine lots of people are testing the service right now but from my brief trial, the video quality is good and the process, once both parties are set up, is straightforward.

19.45: Tech writer Peter Ha is unimpressed with what Facebook announced today:
Where is the FB iPad app?! GROUP CHAT AND VIDEO CALLING IS NOT AWESOME
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Peter Ha
 
What's all the negativeness for the iPad? Does fb look horrible on it or something? People want a more ripped down version?
 
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There isn't an actual "Facebook App" for the iPad...just iphone. You have to use some other program that works with facebook.
 
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Facebook's Skype deal could see off Google+

Facebook's partnership with Skype, to provide video chat for its 750 million users, could sound the death knell for Google+ before it has even got going, writes Emma Barnett.

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Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook (AFP)


Facebook’s “awesome product launch” has finally happened, revealing what many technology pundits had already predicted: video chat is now available on the service and is powered by the hugely popular Skype.

The feature allows users to click a new 'call’ button to begin video chatting, and is a natural addition to a social network which now has 750 million users – the equivalent of one in nine of the world’s population, socialising online.

In fact many technology experts are surprised that this development had not happened sooner, as the most natural extension of any kind of social interaction is to add a face-to-face feature.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, is usually quite media-shy. But he did a fantastic job of taking the attention away from Google+, the search giant's new social network which launched last week, by teasing journalists on a tour of Facebook’s Seattle office with the news that an “awesome” product launch was coming imminently. I am sure it was not his intention – but certain cynics have suggested that a major launch by Facebook, only days after Google released a rival social product, was probably a little too well-timed – even though the Skype partnership had been in development for six months.

Moreover, Google+’s 'Hangouts’ feature, which already allows users to video chat, has been quickly deemed its 'killer’ application by early adopters with access to the service, which is currently only open to a limited group of users. It also, until now, had been one of the only differentiators Google+ could boast of to its major rival, Facebook.


Now that Facebook users can video chat, it will be interesting to see if the hype around Google+’s Hangouts feature dies down among technology circles.

With a colossal 750 million members, Facebook is in the luxurious position of being able to add any innovative new tool to its offering and instantly blow other competitors out of the water – at least if its history is anything to go by.

Take the location-sharing trend. All Facebook had to was turn on a location feature, called Places, and instantly thousands of Foursquare users transferred their check-ins to Facebook.
It was the same with photos. Flickr, although still popular with photo enthusiasts, soon lost its mass appeal once Facebook turned on its photo-sharing capabilities. The social network is now the largest photo repository site in the world.

Why? Quite simply because people usually only want to share information with their friends – and the majority of most people’s chums are still all on one network: Facebook.

People have 'sign-up’ fatigue and, while the majority of people’s social circles are on Facebook, have very little incentive to take their digital networking elsewhere. Zuckerberg, a product perfectionist, will find a way to add any type of functionality which is becoming popular elsewhere on the web to his service. Many users are happy to wait for a feature to come to Facebook, rather then having to upload all of their information to a brand new service which they have no assurances that their friends will be on.

Now with the most popular video chat tool available via the most popular social network, Facebook users have even less reason to stray elsewhere when interacting with their friends online.

As Zuckerberg put it: “We think this is an awesome [partnership with Skype]. We are using the best technology for video chat with the best social infrastructure.”

He added that Facebook is all about partnering with the best services online which will benefit from being social and part of the site’s growing eco-system.

This partnership with Skype is the start of Facebook’s move from being just a single website to becoming the fabric which could potentially underpin all social interactions online. Google+ has a long way to go.
 
video chat could be great, but I don't see it killing google
 
I see this is working now and I've tested it out. It's okay :P Google+ hangout is better
 
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