Facebook unveils video chat with Skype
The agreement, ann-ounced by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s headquarters in California, deepens its cooperation with Microsoft, which acquired Skype for $8.5 billion earlier this year.
The new service, which began rolling out yesterday, could be a huge boost for Skype, which currently has about 145 million regular users.
Facebook, Zuckerberg announced, now has 750 million users.
Ford Pitt senior analyst Kim Caughey said: “This is opening up a whole new user base for Skype.
“The core of Skype users are people that have extraordinary circumstances — they have a computer but no money, or they have friends and family on a different continent. This could ultimately grow the number of Skype numbers that use it within the United States.”
Facebook, which also unveiled a group messaging function, adding to its existing one-to-one text chat, is striking back at Google, which last week turned up the competitive heat by introducing a social networking service of its own, dubbed Google+.
While many of the features of Google+ are similar to those already available on Facebook, Google has attracted praise for its videoconferencing function, which allows up to 10 people on the service to participate in a video call.
Facebook’s new offering, which initially is limited to one-to-one video chat, could benefit Microsoft, which owns 1.6% of Facebook and announced its purchase of Skype in May.
The world’s largest software company is also trying to muscle in on Google’s turf with its Bing search engine, and is hoping Skype will help it broaden its portfolio of web-based properties.
Skype, which was founded in 2003, allows people to make internet phone calls and video calls at no charge and has also developed premium services.
