Facebook gets awesome with Skype

Facebook has unveiled a group chat tool, a new design for its overall chat interface, and, yes, a video calling service based on Skype. "Video calling is the first example of what we think of as a great social app," Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a press event at the company's Palo Alto, California, …

[Ashton Black]

Not Impressed.

Meh.

[El Zorro]

Backfoot

Sounds like a hurried reaction to "huddle" in google+ ( which already support multiple video feeds )

[Anonymous Coward]

Plugin details?

Any details of the plugin? Browser add-on? Windows only?

[Anonymous Coward]

fracking sheep

see title

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably IE-only too

Knowing Microsloth…

I'd love to be proven wrong however. I'd like to be proven exceptionally wrong, and for someone to post up a link to a git repository which has the FaceBook's plugin as source code in some OSI-approved license.

But I bet I won't be. The once vendor agnostic Internet is becoming as proprietary as ever.

Thankfully, as I've never courted Mr Zuckerberg's invention, its openness or lack thereof are of no immediate concern to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows

Prompts to download an exe so Windows only.

The other big pain is that the bar can't be turned off or hidden and sits right over on the right hand side by the scroll bar and it shows ALL your friends even if they are off line. So it takes up space and you've got to be careful using the scroll bar now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Recognition

So does this mean that down the line, Facebook will be implementing some sort of creepy voice recognition tracking to go along with the face recognition and tracking?

Sock mouth-piece on stand-by.

[NoneSuch]

Oooooooooo...

Facebook, Skype and Bing together at last.

Beyond saying "meh" I cannot think of anything else...

[jake]

Absofuckinglutely wonderful!

Zuckerberg's invented email, mailing lists and Usenet!

I wonder if the twit knows how daft he looks ...

[Guillermo Lo Coco]

SKYKE is NOT XMPP.

Without S2S XMPP, facebook is still the same sh..t.

No news TODAY.

[Anonymous Coward]

A whole new meaning

Gives a new meaning to 'go fuck yourself'.

Now you can facefuck yourself with facebook.

[mraak]

G+

I'm switching there, I haven't used FB at all but somehow managed to get 450 friends out of which Id like to stay in touch with 30 and have others only as my contacts.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the Intelligence Services think this is great!!!

Facebook is a gaping security hole. Skype has irritated numerous governments due to the way it does encryption. Doing Skype through Facebook is an Intelligence Service wet dream!

A made for motion picture back door into Skype! Wo! Ho!

[Anonymous Coward]

How to disable it?

Do I need to press the "try it now" button, or is there any way to disable/remove that stupid sidebar?

[Magnus Ramage]

Hiding sidebar

There's a little cog symbol in the bottom-right of the sidebar. Clicking on it brings up a pop-up menu which contains a Hide Sidebar option - thereafter it reverts to the traditional Chat button. I don't know whether it can be disabled permanently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my

Fraping someone is about to be taken to a whole new level...

[Ian Yates]

Standards

I'm glad to see they've picked one of the many interopable and open video-chat standards that are already in use. Oh, wait...

[JDX]

plugin

Just if it prompts to download as .EXE on Windows, doesn't mean it is Windows-only... can someone clarify what happens on nix/Mac?

Presumably it is a plugin simply because HTML5 isn't widespread yet and it allows them to re-use existing code.

[Winkypop]

Baubles for the sheeples

Come get you shiny things!

Glittery shiny things!

They're freeeeee, (bwahahahahaaaaa)

[shamonymous cowherd]

You can turn it off

Click the little gear in the bottom left of the sidebar and select "Hide Sidebar".

It goes back to the old discrete chat thingy.

[Neil Charles]

We've released a thing!

It's a lot like one of our smaller competitor's new things but a bit more unstable. The user interface isn't very nice yet either. It will work in a while though. We'll patch it.

Aren't we great!

Yup, Microsoft are having an impact over at Facebook already.

[Shakje]

Would you be happier if they called it a beta?

See title.

[Neil Charles]

Called it a Beta? I'm happy now

I've been looking forward to watching Zuckerberg fall of his perch and ropey Skype integration is another step in the right direction.

[Nanki Poo]

wish they would roll it back...

Everything has gone FUBAR... chat buggering around, messages disappearing, wall posts being selective, online/offline switching back and forth... just roll the fucker back and leave the site alone for at least one week! Gah!

nK

[SpecialGray]

Consider me un-awesomed

TBH, I would have been much more impressed with a decent iPhone app instead of the god-awful buggy, unstable, unintuitive POS that is currently available. About the only thing it is good for is synching profile photos to my contact list.

[John 62]

iOS Facebook app

I think it's OK, though it takes forever to load on my iPhone 3G, especially when the processor is trying to lock onto a cell signal. The big annoyance I have with it is that the comments handling is different depending on whether you go through the timeline view or the notifications view.

[John 62]

group chat and video calling

teh futarr is heer!!11!1

i) I don't do instant messaging. Tried it, don't like it. And MS was doing group chats with MSN Messenger many, many moons ago. I am permanently marked offline in FB and was annoyed when they turned it on last night and I had to click 'Try now' to get to the gear to turn it off.

ii) I hardly ever make voice calls, so why would I want to make video calls. When I have relatives on another continent I can use Skype.

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing the point of FB

I always thought that, like email, Facebook was the sort of communication that didn't need immediate feedback. You check it now and again (or every 6 seconds for some people!) and respond accordingly. The little chat function was useful for passing on a link or just saying hello. Adding voice ad video calling is missing the point of it all. You could say its like sprinkling sugar on a turd...