Skype Comes To Facebook
There was lots of speculation that Facebook would be getting Skype video calling integration and that’s now confirmed from Facebook:
Over the last year, the messages team has been working to make it easier to have one on one conversations with your friends. In November, we launched the new messages, which brings together your chats, texts, emails and messages all in one place.
Today I’m excited to introduce video calling and other improvements to chat.
See The Friends You Message Most
The new chat design includes a sidebar that lists the people you message most. Now it’s easier to find your friends and start a conversation. The sidebar adjusts with the size of your browser window, and it automatically appears when the window is wide enough.
Create a Group Chat Instantly
We’re also launching multi-person chat, which is one of our most requested features. Now when your friends can’t figure out what movie to see, you can just add them to a chat and decide together. To include more friends in your conversation, simply select Add Friends to Chat.
And just like your other chats, the history of your conversation is available in messages.
Bring Your Conversations to Life
Video chat has been around for years now, but it’s still not an everyday activity for most people. Sometimes it’s too difficult to set up, or the friends you want to talk to are on different services.
So 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. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.
For those of us who have been working on this, it’s particularly exciting to bring video calling to over 750 million people. We’re making this available in over 70 different languages, so friends can stay in touch all over the world.
Video calling will be available to everyone over the next few weeks, but if you don’t want to wait, you can get it now.
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Oh the possibilities for so many.
Microsoft if you’re reading, this is a good time to finally begin to leverage all of your IP’s. WL Messenger, Skype and Facebook IM needs to be native to all of your systems going forward. Period. That means next update for everything consumer device based, Xbox (Fall 2011 is too soon, Spring 2012 update), Windows 8 and Windows Phone Tango (Maybe too soon but definitely for Apollo) should all support this. Or at least announce it. Skype integration shouldn’t be too difficult post-mango given the way everything else is.
The API’s may be a lil fuzzy but come on, you can pimp slap Google, Apple, Sony and Nintendo in one clean chin check. Apple may have facetime and Google may have video chat in gChat but is it fully integrated? Would Android users have to use separate apps to video chat to with people using facebook and skype? (foregone conclusion with iPhones…).
Hey Simmons, Ramon and the rest of the gang, what do you guys think?
They probably need to close on the Skype acquisition first;) I do agree though – this is huge. Not sure if you know but MS bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook a few years ago. The deal gave them advertising rights on FB. This strengthens that position and makes Skype far more global and ubiquitous. MS is known to be preparing integration in Win8 – there’s a missed video call icon on their home screen demo. Make it all integrate and we’re back in WinWorld for everything