Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Said To Resume Talks With Skype
An anonymous reader writes "You may soon be able to start a Skype video call with your friends on Facebook. The latest rumor suggests that Facebook and Skype have resumed talks about integrating the video conferencing technology on the social network. The two companies first talked about a potential partnership in September 2010, but they could not reach an agreement. When Skype 5.0 was released in October 2010, the new version offered voice calling between Facebook friends, but it did not include a video chatting feature."
If I want to talk to my friends, I'm going to just call them. I'm certainly not going to login to a website and send messages through a proprietary system to them. And I'm *certainly* not going to login to the website, find their page or find them in some contact list, then call them via skype. Instead, I'm going to . . . you know, pick up the fucking phone.
Besides, Skype isn't in keeping with the spirit of Facebook. Facebook (like all social networking) is NOT about one on one communication. Social networking sites are all about "I AM SO IMPORTANT... I AM **SO** IMPORTANT . . . . that I can't be bothered to let the people important to me in y life know about things or talk with them. Instead, I'm going to broadcast it to the entire world so I can put in the least amount of effort and personal interaction to accomplish telling EVERYONE on earth about X, Y, and Z. . ."
The only way this would keep in spirit with facebook is if it only broadcast everything you said via Skype into some massive 1,200 person distribution list that they can then *listen* to.
I'd love to see Skype come out with a supported, up to date version of their client for Linux first. Oh, and also, not to drop my calls as often. Et cetera.
Mustard/ gravy is a nice to have, but not very useful when the steak and potatoes aren't already on the plate.
Since facebook uses XMPP, this would mean that they would create a gateway between skype and XMPP.
This would be frikkin awesome since then I could finally dump skype.
I like how Facebook is adopting "new" technologies so people can better connect with each other, but I'm not sure I want it as the standard for everything on the internet. I think there are some improvements you can make to a universal online, profile system like Facebook. I mean, at some point, there's gonna be clashes between your image and anonymity, because of all the integration. Is Facebook going to be that image? Eh...I certainly hope not. But it almost seems for certain that anonymity is in many respects, a thing of the past. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, as Facebook integrates themselves more and more with peoples' lives, you're gonna have a correlation between the person posting on some obscure website, to the person walking outside to pick up their morning newspaper.
Facebook is becoming our 20th century metaphorical lightbulb, so to speak--it's an advancement that we can't seem to do without, but at the same time, let's start making the switch over to AC instead of DC current. Yea? Alrighty then.
I've been on the waiting list for google's phone service for ages because its not available on my country. With something like this it will make Facebook even more widespread and convenient for regular folks and it will make it even harder for google to compete 'socially'. I know lots of people still think that the goog is unbeatable and can't be unseated but Facebook is making all the right moves and all the right noises, and they are expanding their tentacles outside of their walled garden.
A lot of commentators seem to think that all they want is to suck content and people inside Facebook but these kind of partnerships and integrations such as their comment board initiative will help them spread and break outside of their own realm as well.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Hate to think Facebook would only have audio of phone sex to make "freely-available to developers and other interested parties"....
lolll...although I suppose your Skype calls might be the exception-to-the-Facebook-rule, and so be kept private...but being a gambling man, that wouldn't be the wager I would make. Not when I consider the size of the forces that want to ensure that the 'net is never considered to be a common carrier...and not when Facebook seems to be willing to make a buck for Zuck from all of the rest of your "confidential you hope" data.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
So, Seen's already available as a way of free voice/videocalling between FB users via iPhone. Shame there's no Android or in-browser support yet though :(
1st month: it's discovered any one of your FB friends can initiate a video call (which is conveniently automatically "accepted") leading to hilarity as someone you don't know now can see you in your skivvies.
2nd month: it's discovered that your FB friends (and their friends) can play with the URL bar to get access to your call history and, in some cases, play back phone calls. Which are, of course, recorded and passed through filters counting the number of times you say Bieber, restaurant and Google.
3rd month: A service "upgrade" publishes data for telemarketers (oh yeah, remember all those companies you've been "liking"?) for VoIP calls. Which happens to also include your cell phone information. FaceBook releases a statement that oh yeah, we forgot about that Do Not Call registry.
6th month: It's revealed that FB charges the Feds a low, low price of $0.99/time period for your call records.
Add your own below
Linux users would love to have a Skype update that would say,,, acknowledge the existence of KDE4, QT4, PulseAudio (properly), and dare I say sometime this century - 64bits!!! We don't care about Facebook or all the other garbage that has been shoved into the Windows version of Skype. Skype users on Linux have had no update in 2 years (we don't all use that hideous brown Linux version).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The lock-in of Facebook combined with the lock-in of Skype. Poor Average Joes are going be stuck on them forever. Good thing I never put any personal info into Skype, I'm sure Facebook would love to make me a profile based on my Skype info.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You do realize that the "up to date" Skype client is a horrible piece of adware/nagware, while the old one is just a nice quiet application? Be careful what you wish for.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I realize you're probably trolling/spamming, but even in a world with a fully-decentralized mesh Internet free of corporate or government control, stupid idiots would still use it to access awful privacy-destroying locked-in services like Facebook. The freedom is for the geeks to enjoy, most people want to be spoon-fed a Just Works solution :-(
If you hate Facebook, you should be promoting something like Diaspora.
Also the HSMM-MESH project is much further along than Freedom Box. If the Freedom Box guys want to help, they should be building the anonymization, universal encryption and karma system layers to work on top of HSMM-MESH.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I ran my own BBS before the Internet was available in my town.
Local communities were established and people "belonged" to many BBSes (not one provider).
My family participated in the "beta" of the Prodigy Online Computer + Network all in one box.
I looked at its' GUI and thought -- Meh, my ASCII BBS may not have a client program, but some of my door games do, and I can't even use the computer for anything else, this is too restricted to succeed.
When the Internet came, I had a portal for my users on the BBS.
The Internet was so popular my lines were constantly tied, and no one used any other feature of the BBS.
I realized the BBS interconnectivity & long-distance restrictions had been solved via the Internet -- It must replace BBS because you can "belong" to a world of "servers" instead of just your local BBSes...
AOL was a huge BBS -- Many people didn't even use it's Internet gateway until websites got started... (Fsck AOL Kewords!) It was another centralized "everything here" system like Prodigy sans dedicated computer terminal.
It's still slogging along on momentum from back then, but I think many people would agree pure unrestricted web browser and Internet access is better than BBSes with Internet Gateways... (esp. now that Internet aware applications exist).
Yahoo got very popular, among many other IM systems -- I was just using IRC via a terminal app.
I kept seeing people join these ever increasing in size, yet still fractured communities looking to "belong" and to "connect".
Myspace & Facebook & other "networking" sites came around and got popular, but they were all sort of like the BBS (but worse, because Sysops would sometimes exchange volumes of their data to mutual benefit, where Facebook doesn't, except your private user data -- that which honorable BBS Sysops would never divulge.).
Invariably some people were info hoarders -- They have HDs full of saved websites & images (incase the site disappears or the image/video is pulled down, or they move from one service to another) -- Nothing has changed since the BBS days I thought... And then I thought about that and I realized something.
The true power of the community is its connections. The web is good because of all the connections, but the distinction between "client" and "server" is a horrible concept... Sites push out content, and some allow user uploaded contend, but they all suffer from Silo Syndrome... The info is in these Silos, not distributed among all these amazingly powerful machines. Facebook adding Skype is just further proof of the "collect it all until the system collapses on itself" Info-Silo syndrome.
Trying to gather all the data up into a pile for everyone to access is like a BBS... We learned that its better distributed. All machines could be (are already) both clients and servers (but few actually take advantage of this directly -- more in the game community, do, but only for games / chat).
I started to get the idea that there needs to be an open protocol for community connections: IM, voice, images, updates, journals, etc. Aggregators like Google can be used to "index" content and tell everyone where to find stuff, but not all data needs to be pubilc. Another tier is needed -- smaller aggregator systems that index individuals that are close to you (the people that allow you to see "friends only" data). The only way to do this securely is if the aggegator is trusted by (run by) mutal friends, or by everyone in a distributed manor. This requires goodwill on the friends part that they won't download your friend's only data and make it public (not a friend eh?).
So, different tiers of friendship, different relationships need to have their own permissions in addition to friends -- individual friends.
Everyone would have to run their own aggegators & client/servers, but some of it can be optimized in the "public" or "friends" acc
Or at least, as they promised, feature a library handling the skype specific stuff behind closed doors (protocols, protocol-level encryption, etc.) and let all the rest (GUI, Audio/Video Input/Output, desktop integration, etc.) be handled by 3rd party clients with plugins tapping into said library ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]