Palo Alto, California — Communicating over the Internet has finally reached a new height as the world’s largest social media network Facebook wants to make it easier for its 750 million users worldwide to see each others’ faces, on Wednesday, with its “awesome” announcement added Skype video chat to its pages, while fending off increased competition from Google.
Google may be advancing to win social netizens to its newly launched Google+ project, but Facebook has bestowed them with one more reason to stick around. The social media networking giant on Wednesday announced video chat via a partnership with Microsoft-owned Skype.
The deal, announced by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters on Wednesday, augment the company’s collaboration with Microsoft Corp, which is in the process of buying Skype to build up its web presence.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces a partnership with Skype today at his company’s H.Q. in Palo Alto, Calif.
Facebook Video Calling, powered by a compact Skype plug-in, empowers users to launch a video chat session with one other person using only two clicks. Because the plug-in is downloaded on-demand, with a single permission request, users can initiate video calls and recipients can answer without pre-installing Skype’s software.
This technique, however, eliminates a traditional barrier to the growth and adoption of software-based services, on both the Web and the desktop–the need to install and maintain software.
“The majority of users does not want to take the time to configure this stuff themselves,” said Facebook’s CEO Zuckerberg to the group of journalists who had come to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., to see what had been billed as the introduction of “something awesome.”
Facebook has been moving toward this reality for the past year. The Web 2.0 darling’s messages team has made several moves that aim to make it easier for its members to have conversations with friends. A Facebook e-mail address is one example. A new function that pools chats, texts, e-mails and messages is another. But video chat was obviously missing from the leading social media networking platform.
“The new chat design includes a sidebar that indexes the people you message most. Now it is easier to find your friends and start a conversation,” Philip Su, an engineer on Facebook’s video calling team, wrote in the company blog. “The sidebar adjusts with the size of your browser window, and it automatically appears when the window is wide enough.”
Video chats can help Facebook ward off competition from Google, which recently rolled out a similar social network with that feature, and offers an alternative to Apple’s FaceTime for the iPhone. Zuckerberg is using partnerships and media features to increase Facebook’s audience and avert user defections.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, left, watches a demonstration of the new Facebook video chat during a news conference at Facebook headquarters.
“You are going to have a plentiful of competition between Facebook and Google,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Capital. “The two companies are going to be battling it out for some time to come.”
In addition, Facebook also rolled out a multi-person chat feature that lets several people hold online conversations at the same time.
“Video chat has been around for years now, but it is still not a mundane activity for most people. Sometimes it is too difficult to set up, or the friends you want to talk to are on different services,” Su explained. “So a few months ago, we began working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”
Cool New Scenarios:
“We are utilizing the best technology that is out there for implementing video chat with the best social infrastructure that is out there in order to formulate some really cool new scenarios,” Zuckerberg said during a presentation at the event.
Skype CEO Tony Bates, left, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hold a news conference at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Photo: Reuters
Surprisingly, Facebook began holding discussions with Skype about extending web video calls on its social media network in 2010, a person familiar with the talks said earlier this year. An October update to Skype included voice calling between Facebook friends. Microsoft agreed to buy Skype in May.
“This is a really strategic long term deal between Skype and Facebook,” said Neil Stevens, vice president and general manager for consumer at Skype. “This is not just a one shot one deal implementation of a product. This is a long term relationship.”
Facebook also said it now boasts more than 750 million users, up from 500 million, in an announcement today at an event in Palo Alto, California, where it is based. The new service, rolling out from Wednesday, could be a huge boost for Skype, which currently has about 145 million regular users.
Besides, Microsoft, a long- time Facebook associate, is acquiring Skype in a $US8.5 billion deal expected to close later this year.
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