RE: Facebook launching Skype-powered chat?
Less than a week after the resounding launch of Google+ and its new “Hangouts” feature that allows users to video chat with one another through their browser in real-time, Facebook issued a statement that they would launch an “awesome” new product this week. A number of analysts are predicting that Facebook will reveal that feature to be in-browser video chat, much like Google+ Hangouts.
A number of Facebook’s recent hires have been in the video space, and the company is also expected to announce a partnership with Skype, who’s help Facebook will enlist in building and rolling out the video chat service. We’ll have to wait until later this week to see what Facebook has in store, but it would make sense for the social network to launch its own video chat product now, especially right after Google+ has appeared.
Presumably, Facebook’s video chat service would hook in to Facebook chat and allow in-browser Skype calls to other Facebook users. The most recent beta of Skype for Windows supports Facebook Chat already, which is another clue that if Skype is involved, it’ll have something to do with in-browser video chat.
If there were a partnership at hand, it could open the door for Skype to access some of Facebook’s 750 million users, and definitely make Microsoft, Skype’s new owners, happy about the broadening reach of their newly purchased company.
At the same time, the question remains whether or not Facebook users would actually use video chat services, and how they would be integrated into the user experience. With Hangout, users have to start or join video chats in progress that they have access to: you can’t just start a video session with someone because you’re connected to them.
It would be unlike Facebook to change Facebook Chat significantly to give users that kind of privacy, so expect video icons on Facebook from users who support the service in the future, and unexpected video calls from friends you haven’t spoken to in years, or from relatives who “just want to catch up.”
Source: geek.com