Facebook‘s founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new video call feature to be rolled out in a couple of weeks. Users will be able to make free video calls to their friends through the site as a result of Facebook’s partnership with the web telephony service Skype. So, now two of the web’s most popular consumer services will be available all in one and with one click.
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Those, who don’t want to wait can start to use the feature right now.
Zuckerberg also announced group chat and a redesigned layout for Facebook chat. With more than 750 million users Facebook is, probably, the biggest chat in the world. New features were unveiled just a week after Google launched its Google+, which includes a video chat feature called Hangouts, says The Guardian. But Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to be worried about it.
«I’m not going to talk too much about Google. Lots of companies that have not traditionally looked at social networking apps—not just Google—will be trying apps. I view a lot of this as validation of how the next five years will play out—every app will be social,» he said at the launch in company’s headquarters Palo Alto, California. «We just have to stay focused on building the best service for that. If we don’t, someone else will.»
«The world generally believes that social software will be everywhere, and it will only be a matter of time before it reaches billions of people, whether through us or someone else. The driving narrative is not about wiring up the world because a lot of the interesting stuff has been done but about what cool social apps you can build now this social infrastructure is in place,» he added.
In May Skype was acquired by Microsoft for an estimated $8.5bn. The technology giant also invested $240mn in the firm in 2007. 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 on Facebook is expected to reach $5.74bn, up 42% over 2011.