India Internet News
Facebook Introduces Video Chat Powered By Skype
09 July 2011
More than 50,000 viewers from around the world have visited the Facebook site late tonight, making the live webcast from the Palo Alto headquarters of the company come to a crawl. The social networking giant was expected to discuss about plans for a new product in-browser video chat, powered by Skype. That's what CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced - a multi-chat product with video calling.
The Facebook blog states that "A few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. In November, we launched new messages, which bring together chats, texts, emails and messages. Today, we are excited to introduce video calling and other improvements. The new chat design includes a sidebar that lists the people you message the most. We’re also launching a multi-person chat."
By the way, before this was announced, Facebook’s 30 million active users in India and Google were rolling out thousands of 140-character tweets in expectation. Facebook and Twitter were getting 3,500 hits per minute at the time of going to press, according to information from Twirus.com.
Facebook users are already allowed to use instant messages and import news feeds, comments and ‘Like’ from Skype.
Moreover, on 10th May this year, Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype at $8.5 billion. Known for unified communication (integration of real-time communication services like instant messaging, internet telephony and video conferencing) products, Microsoft is expected to have plans to integrate Skype technology with their products.
With Facebook-Skype video chat, there will be an intense battle for online users. On the one hand, Google will be having its audio and video chat product Google+, Chrome browser, Google Docs and search offerings. On the other hand, Facebook will have a video chat with Skype, and Microsoft will have a social search offering (it partnered with Facebook for this last October), Office 365 to battle Google Docs, Bing search engine and unified communication products.
Amanjot Johal, a Sydney-based consultant, posted a message saying, “After using Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Apple Facetime, I can say that Google has the killer feature.” However others like Freida Paul modified their Facebook status suggesting, “It will be difficult to predict how many of Facebook’s 500 million (active) users will switch to Google+. Nevertheless, there are enough innovative ideas built into Google+ that Facebook has no choice but to respond.”
Indian social media companies have their take too. The CEO of WATConsult, Rajiv Dingra, added that “Video was the only thing missing from Facebook's armour when it came to peer to peer interaction services.”
Facebook heads the social media network with about 750 million users (500 million are active), followed by LinkedIn (100 million), Twitter (75 million), Orkut (100 million, mostly in Brazil and India) and MySpace (30 million). Google's previous attempts in the social networking space have met with poor success.
If the buzz in the online world is to be believed, Google is supposed to rename Picasa and Blogger to Google products in the next 6 weeks. The move, according to Mashable, is part of an effort to unify the brand for the public launch of Google+. The search giant declined to comment on the report. According to Mashable, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger “Google Blogs”. YouTube is unlikely to be branded.
Meanwhile, the Facebook team in Seattle is consistently working on Project Spartan - code name for a new HTML5-based platform - and aims to reach 100 million users in the mobile space. The platform aims to work on the iPhone (and iPad).