Facebook users will be able to make free video calls to their friends through the site, after the giant social networking -facebook announced a partnership with Skype.
Facebook introduced the new feature as one of a slate of new sharing and communication tools to be launched in the next few months. Skype video calling with Facebook, which has been six months in development, comes just a week after Google launched its own social networking layer called Google+, which includes a video chat feature called Hangouts. Facebook took the very public opportunity of playing down Google+.
Facebook-Skype relationship isn’t really about savvy investment. It’s about fighting off Google.
What I noticed today is a hardening of battle lines between the two sides that will, I bet, ultimately own the majority of our social networking activity.
In this corner, we have Facebook and soon-to-be owner-of-Skype Microsoft. In the opposite corner, we have Google (and perhaps Twitter). With each update Facebook appears to be drawing closer and closer to Microsoft. During the press conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Microsoft’s ownership of Skype actually gave him some comfort about the video chat service’s stability. Microsoft’s Facebook deals, and you can include the new video chat feature from Skype, are all aimed squarely at the search king. And just as the Web search giant has changed the market dynamics to undermine Microsoft’s power–helping establish the Web, not the PC desktop, as the heart of computing–so too is Facebook challenging Google. Its service, with 750 million users worldwide, is becoming something of an alternative Internet, a place where computer users spend huge chunks of time and never touch a Google service.
In May, Microsoft began including recommendations from Facebook friends into its Bing search engine, elevating results that receive a “like” from someone in the searcher’s network. That way, when people search for a coffee shop in Los Angeles, for example, a java stop that won Facebook praise from their friends will rate higher in their search results, as long as they are logged in, than other nearby locations.
The Microsoft-Facebook deals are creating services that Google has yet to match. Google has tried to add social networking to search, creating its +1 button to shower favor on a news article, a company, or even a search result. But its network isn’t the equal of Facebook. So clicking the +1 button doesn’t have the same impact as clicking a Facebook “like.”
Facebook mentioned that to support growth, Facebook would be establishing more data centres after it opened its first in April this year. He made several subtle but interesting digs at Google, cleverly reinforcing his strategy of describing Facebook as the default social infrastructure of the web on which all other services will deploy their social elements. Default MySpace friend Tom Anderson wrote a good post, published on Google+, about Zuckerberg’s comments on Google, but it is also worth noting that Zuckerberg described Google+ as just another company experimenting with social tools. With a touch of humility, Zuckerberg conceded that if Facebook doesn’t keep innovating, it will be a different social infrastructure company that takes its place.
On the press call after the presentation I asked what the roadmap for the development of this feature looks like, especially given how exciting Skype calls within Facebook’s mobile apps could be.
Video calls on mobile through the Facebook app would be a direct rival to Apple’s FaceTime but with a powerful social driver to initiate calls from within Facebook. That’s what makes the video call so compelling from within Facebook though that said, I think many people might have the same reaction as me – to thoroughly review and clean up their Facebook contacts. Hovering over profile thumbnails and bringing up the ‘video chat’ option made me realise how few of these contacts I’d really what to talk to! If we haven’t spoken since school, there’s probably a reason for that. But that’s for another day.
The new video chat feature unveiled today offers the potential to extend Skype to an ever wider audience. Facebook users can connect their accounts with Skype. If they chose to, it opens another outlet for the video-conferencing service. Microsoft has already talked about baking Skype into a host of products, everything from its Outlook e-mail software to its Xbox video game console. The new deal could conceivably allow video chats from a Skype customer through a Facebook account on a PC to a TV set where an Xbox user, also connected by Skype, is online.
That’s why Google continues to innovate too. Its Google+ social network, launched to a limited number of users last week, is a direct threat to Facebook, offering features unavailable from its established rival. Google+ Circles is a far more convenient way to sort friends and acquaintances and send updates to specific groups than Facebook’s friend set-up. And Google+ Hangouts was first to video chat, and allows users to connect with up to nine of their contacts. The new Facebook video chat service only allows one-to-one calling.
There’s little doubt the battle will continue with both sides ratcheting up the pressure with new services and features. Standing next to Bates at the press conference today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made that perfectly clear. “We’re in the process of figuring out what we want to do next,” Zuckerberg said.
The partnership exploits Facebook’s connections with Microsoft, the technology giant which invested $240m (£117m) in the firm in 2007 and also acquired Skype in May this year for an estimated $8.5bn (£)5.2bn. Skype’s chief executive, Tony Bates, said the company had put significant effort into ensuring its own infrastructure would be able to support Facebook’s vast userbase, which will help Skype meet its own ambition of reaching 1 billion users.
Research firm eMarketer estimates Facebook’s global ad revenues will reach $4.05bn this year – more than double last year’s figure of $1.86bn in global ad revenues.
By 2012, worldwide ad spending is expected to reach $5.74 bn, up 42% over 2011 on
