Facebook Launches Video Calling for Chat
Not to be outdone by all the glowing reviews for Google+, Facebook last week announced that it would announce something 'awesome' on July 6. Well, that day has come and today, at an event in Palo Alto, Mark Zuckerberg revealed the surprise.
Last week, Facebook announced that its Seattle team had been working on something 'awesome' and the rumor mill was churning out reports of a Facebook/Skype partnership. This afternoon, at a press event in California, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed reports and unveiled a new video chat feature for Facebook as part of a collaboration with VoIP company Skype.
Facebook and Skype's video chat function will be built right into the social network's already present instant messaging service (which, incidentally, now supports group chat).
"For those of us who have been working on this, it's particularly exciting to bring video calling to over 750 million people," said Facebook engineer Philip Su. "We're making this available in over 70 different languages, so friends can stay in touch all over the world."
The timing for the announcement fits in quite nicely with the launch of Google+, which also allows its users to video chat with each other. Facebook's having a similar tool fully operational prior to the public launch of G+ will be very valuable for the company. Still, G+ does have the added functionality of group video chat with up to ten people at once, while Facebook and Skype have limited users to just one-on-one calls.
Video calling is going to be rolled out to everyone over the next few weeks but if you want it now, hit up facebook.com/videocalling.
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Yay, now I have 25 ways to do video calls....
ZZZzzzz, will never join any of those lame ass "look at me right now" sites. Now I'm going outside and ride my bike in the real world.
yaayyyyy I WILL VIDEO CALL YOU ALLS!!! with prons!!
I'm just waiting for the facebook video dating services to start rolling in ala gamecrush
ugh i hate facebook
atleast its free...
atleast its free...
... and worth every penny!
@ReggieRay you will be the only one biking outside, everyones inside on the "look at me right now" sites, but perhaps if you went on facebook and organized a biking event......
the one-on-one calls of Skype on Facebook seems like an undercard to the group video chat of Google+ main event
Good feature by Facebook, but I think I won’t use it in the near future.
You have to install an .exe? What the hell is this garbage? I'm not installing your botnet Facebook.
Another yawn from facebook...
It's really weird how most tech enthusiasts loathe Facebook with a passion, yet the rest of the world generally like it a lot.
I'll get rated down to oblivion for even suggesting this, but I think it's partly just snobbery from an audience of smartarses who claim to have a problem with Facebook's privacy but just haven't actually bothered to sit down and learn to use Facebook's privacy tools properly, so when something else comes along to that looks 'cleaner' and 'newer' they all jump on board as if it's offering a fundamentally superior service than useless old Facebook. The reality is; it's offering little more than Facebook offers, if you bother to spend 30 seconds finding it.
I'm seeing countless tech review websites singing songs about Google+'s 'circles' feature, and how you can restrict certain posts to certain categories of people. Of course, Facebook groups haven't offered this for three years, right? And yes, believe it or not, you can also disable news feeds from Farmville in Facebook (and any other application for that matter). Another 10 second job.
I won't drone on, but Facebook really isn't as bad as most of you guys crack it up to be.
I won't drone on, but Facebook really isn't as bad as most of you guys crack it up to be.
I think most of us techies would agree that Facebook needs to be cast back into the fiery pits of hell where it spawned.