Google may have recently rocked the social networking world with the unveiling of Google+, but today the folks at Facebook made a but of an earthquake of its own by announcing a partnership with Skype that'll bring video chat to the 'Book. The service allows users to make a video call to anyone on their friends list and, if there's no answer, you can leave a video message. Facebook says video chat will be rolled out to everyone over the next few weeks, but the more impatient among us can go ahead and begin bugging all our friends with video calls right now. Regular text-based Facebook chat also received some new features today, including a makeover that allows you to easily see the people you message most and chat with a group of friends at once.
Facebook's video chat service is nowhere near the first of it's kind, but it still has the potential to be pretty big for any of the social network's 750 million users(!) that use Facebook chat with any kind of regularity. There's no mention of when Facebook video chat may make its way to mobile devices, but as the number of phones with a front-facing grows, I wouldn't be surprised to see the feature eventually be integrated into the Facebook apps. So what do you all make of Facebook video chat? Anyone think they'll use it beyond the initial one or two test calls?
Via Facebook
- Log in to post comments