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Facebook, Skype Getting Really Friendly
cgriffin21 writes "Facebook and Skype are reportedly in talks over a deal that would integrate Skype calling capabilities into Facebook user accounts. Such an agreement would give both Skype and Facebook not only a leg up on rival VoIP and social networking services from the likes of Google, but also the combined force of two Internet-based services beloved by consumers. The talks, which were reported by All Things Digital on Wednesday, stem from Facebook's goal of merging IP communications and social networking communities more closely together. Facebook in recent weeks had also been rumored to be developing a mobile device of its own."
Oh you said consumers. Carry on then.
I'll leave it to someone else to do the Princess Bride thing?
In Soviet Russia, skype and facebook consume YOU!
I wonder what impact this might have on magic jack. I've used that service far more than any other type of online communications. It also has a nice feature of letting me take it oversea's and as long as i have a high speed connection, i can still make any phone calls back to north america for free.
About as much as Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, and Tribes and Geocities were I guess..
If this trend continues interest in disco music will continue to sky-rocket!
One more reason to dump skype for a truly private VoIP solution. Still waiting..
Awesome! When Facebook crashes and burns it'll also hurt Skype! Two birds, one stone.
Facebook: yuck
Skype: yuck
Facebook + Skype: yyuucckk
So is facebook actually trying to be profitable?
I think they are starting to realize if they went public with there stock it wouldn't be worth anything except the personnel info of over 500,000,000 people which is free anyways.
OMG- Skype and Facebook are now Friends?!
Like!
I haven't checked recently, but what's the status of voip over jabber? We've seeing a lot of collusion and conglomeration between monolithic "walled garden" services, and I think we'll see more of it. The open source community has alternatives, but I'm starting to think we're going to have to step up our game to fight the momentum that the closed systems have.
I think it's positive that Diaspora was able to raise $200k through crowd-sourcing, and I don't agree with people who say it was a waste of money, if only because it showed it was possible. But the reality is that $200k is pennies in comparison to the funds that Facebook, Skype, and others have. And I think it's fair to say that for every talented, idealistic open source programmer willing to work on the side to open the up communication channels, whether it's the web or voip or anything else, there's dozens of talented developers willing to take large salaries to work on proprietary, walled software.
We seem to have solved a lot of the questions that open source brought up when it was first popularized by Linux (management, how to make a profit, etc), but we still have some big questions to ask in terms of how to fund these projects while maintaining independence, and how to compete with well-funded corporations that have an invested interest in keeping things proprietary and walled off. Not just on features, but on user interface and experience, stability, scalability, and other software design concerns.
I don't know if I have any answers, but I'd sure love to hear suggestions. Call it the next big challenge for open source, but we increasingly need to be able to make user-facing software that appeals to the least savvy of users, we need to make it open and flexible, and we need to make it compete with the cycle of new features that come out of proprietary software with massive bank accounts.
--
Appleseed - Open Source, Distributed Social Networking
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
This would make a lot of sense if the rumours about facebook making its own phone are true. This way you get a new phone, login to FB on it and it's setup. This is actually really similar to how motoblur (android) works. Except in this case, all phone calls would also be VoIP, thus potentially making the first all data phone!
Oh how I can't wait until we don't need voice plans anymore, and it's 100% data for everything. I'm also waiting for cable TV to take the big one though, and everyone just has internet, and streams what they want via that to their TV a la netflix, or something else.
Skype and eBay! OMG OMG OMG!!!!! People are generally lazy and it's easier to just call someone using their cell phone. I give it 3 months until they break up. (unlike)
Does it mean Facebook will "gain" skype users too? What if I don't want my Skype calls to be intermediated by Facebook?
Such an agreement would give both Skype and Facebook not only a leg up on rival VoIP and social networking services from the likes of Google
I can already use gmail to make free calls to real phone numbers. This move seems more like playing catchup than anything else.
Twitter and Walmart.
You heard it here first.
Once FB developers get their hands anywhere near it, it'll probably turn into Facebook Chat and all the other realtime communications attempts FB has made over the last few years: a half-assed kludge that will only function somewhat-right about a quarter of the time.
Whatever is necessary to satisfy Zuck's everybody-should-live-in-glass-houses-except-me wet dream I guess.
(twiting) I'm going crap. Baaaa
(FB'ing) He's a pic of me on the throne!! Baaa
Looks like their target customers are from "Jersey Shore"
...Google started crying about antitrust issues.
People still use facebook?
until google can match skype's capabilities. i don't trust anyone who negotiates with facebook.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
There is no middle ground.
what's the status of voip over jabber?
Jingle works fine and is supported by a couple of clients, including Pidgin, Empathy, Gajim and Google Talk.
And just in time for the Movie, featuring Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg. No sacarcasm here. This is actually happening.
I like SIP because it is a open standard, and I do not use Skype because there is no free software which allows me to talk to those who are using it. If Facebook and Skype teams up then that will likely make it even more the de-facto standard like MSN is for IM and it will probably be the total nail in the coffin for SIP. I see this as very bad news indeed.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Now all we need is a jabber server that isn't a huge PITA to setup for authentication etc etc.
Seriously, I got jabber to authenticate against an LDAP but it was a huge amount of hackery to do so. The thought of trying to add VOIP and/or H264 video capabilities into the mix is scary, much as I'd love to do so...
I am both a Skype and Facebook user. This move will mean that I'll stop using Skype. Maybe Google Voice will pick me up as a user, maybe someone else. I don't want my facebook tied to skype or anything else. I won't log onto another website with my facebook account. I won't use google mail, because I use google search....and so on. All these companies are bad enough on their own. This drive to merge, will only drive me away. Every time I read a story like this, I end up googling for disapora (only to see that it hasn't gotten anywhere).
There are already secure GPLed VOIP clients, several of them. They are all internet-only, afaik, and that's the way it should be, if you think about it for about 4 seconds. Let the copper and the cells die already: their architecture and/or protocols are vastly inferior to the internet's for every purpose imaginable.
There is already a "social networking app" that is infinitely more configurable than all the commercial ones put together, and has bullet-proof security. It's called Apache.
There is IM already, XMPP, which has great free clients and servers.
I will probably sound like a no-good elitist that I am, but lately I am becoming convinced that the main problem with the Free Software adoption is that most users are simply too passive or too inept when it comes to communicating with computers. They do not want to or are unable to take control solely due to their technical ineptitude. Many users treat computers as glorified TVs, or glorified filing cabinets, or glorified phones. They do not realize that personal computers are best employed as body-and-mind extensions, as tools so powerful, intelligent, and personal that one would be insane to allow some other party to read a single bit from one's RAM or to run a single instruction on one's CPU. Most people have that down with their thoughts: very few go around and spread true rumors about their personal lives and thoughts. For many, a torture would be needed before they divulge their secrets, and for some even that will fail.
But they don't treat their computers as parts of themselves, and they don't treat public terminals as persons. They prefer gesturing rather than talking (GUI vs. CLI), again, because they are just too lazy or too dumb to learn how to speak the language computers can understand. Of course they don't need free software: it has no intrinsic benefit for them. You can give them Ubuntu, and they will install Skype and Flash on it the very same day because they just don't want to care. They only switch to Free Software when their heads are on fire: when it becomes clear that a proprietary vendor completely shafted them by, say, locking in their data and then abandoning support. Or when they cannot afford the fees anymore. Or when the software just gets worse and worse every year, and one day the work which relies on it grinds to a halt. And right away they are faced with the fact that the Free Software is tailored to a person who cares about god damn control and ability to use the hardware and the software the way they want, which usually comes at the expense of users having to educate themselves about what a computer can and cannot do. And so they actually jump the ship at the first opportunity and leap back into the Big Brother's arms.
In light of the above, I can see only one effective way to bring the Free Software to the masses, and it is education. The software itself, while already superb, can be improved, but that alone won't even begin to close the gap.
As long as I can continue to use my beloved Skype without touching that pariah called Facebook I don't care what they do together. The first time they require a Facebook login or some such nonsense will be the end of my long and mutually profitable venture with Skype.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
... and doesn't know it.
Take a look - a good, long, look - at the posts here.
If you despise the masses, the software and services they use, you are not going to accomplish anything.
iOS tops Linux
I don't know if there's any paid subscription with Facebook. But, I currently pay Skype with my Credit Card. I don't know who keeps this information (e.g. if Skype) keeps in database. Would this merger not give Facebook to link its users with their credit card info? Certainly, with the amount of info kept on FB, the CC info if kept by Skype and all the phone numbers you call, it doesn't seem to be a good mix of sharing of information.
"what's the status of voip over jabber"
Except for GTalk, text over Jabber is still on life support.
I use Skype almost daily to video chat with someone on the opposite side of the earth. Not sure why there are so many haters - I know there are problems with the company and I wish it was more open, but for most people (including Linux users as they do have an official Linux client) it's an incredibly useful service that just works.
Anyway at my end, I use a macbook pro and since I'm on slashdot you might guess I have no problem doing anything on computers. But, at the other end is someone with much less education who doesn't know much about computers beyond how to use it for basic stuff. She didn't even set up the Skype account herself, her sister did. She uses a Windows netbook that's a couple years old, and connects to the internet with a cellular 2G modem (I think - 3G is available but limited). We like Skype because it tends to "Just Work" despite the multitude of potential issues with this setup. Every other video chat solution I've tried in the past was unreliable even in more ideal conditions.
I suppose iChat would work, but that'd require a new expensive computer. What I'm looking for is an alternative that's dead simple to get going, free, and reliable (i.e. it'll work every time). Basically, Skype. But, I foresee a lot of problems that could come if they get too involved with Facebook, and want to have alternatives available just in case. And if there's something better out there anyway, then that's great, because Skype as it is does have some problems. I know I can just google this - and I have - but I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with alternatives.
why I was getting spam from facebook to the unique email address I gave skype - spamfromskype@mydomain ...
Not sure why there are so many haters - I know there are problems with the company and I wish it was more open, but for most people (including Linux users as they do have an official Linux client) it's an incredibly useful service that just works.
There are so many haters because skype doesn't use an open protocol, won't play nice with other voip providers, etc. All proper commercial setups run sip, that they don't segregates professional voip with end user stuff which is very inconvenient.
Two of the worst customer service companies in existence. About the only way to contact either company is through a class action lawyer.