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."

Comments

Why?

[Seumas]

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.

Re:Why?

[Sockatume]

You do realise that people use Skype precisely because there are situations in which it is impractical or uneconomical to use a regular old phone line? The people who use Facebook to communicate to overseas relatives would probably be very happy to give Skype their money and make a voice call if they only knew it existed.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Had this same problem, Turns out you have XP compatibility mode on when you're in windows vista/seven, I did this because they removed the "feature" to pretty much make it go onto your task bar icons when you click the close icon.

I did something drastic (google) and many people complained, and said that it was because of the compatibility mode, sure enough once I turned that off, I stopped getting 3 cores being maxed out, and it doesn't use more then 60MB of ram! Woah!

Re:Why?

[Redlazer]

I think a significantly better question is "Why not"?

Just because you can't think of a good reason to use it, doesn't mean anyone else can't think of a reason to use it.

You further display a remarkable amount of ignorance as to the platforms actual usage. I'm sure some people use it worthlessly, just like Twitter, but it is also a meaningful way to communicate and share what interests you. It, in fact, lets you know some people better than you otherwise might, and can be used to have interesting conversations both online and offline.

I don't understand why people have such a hate on for social networking, as if it "doesn't count" or whatever. It's just another way to communicate. It's damn convenient for showing the world what you care about - and I'm sure you think that people just lie, but that's just not true. Friends like that, are not friends - they are enemies. Why would you be friends with a liar or deceiver in real life?

Also, let us not forget that the advent of the telephone brought about fears of people never seeing each other due to the incredible ease of calling someone.

Some people, of course, use it wrong or annoyingly - those people are ignored. This shit ain't hard, people.

priorities

[bguiz]

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.

Re:priorities

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Yeah, there's not much in the way of information about the Linux client. I've been thinking about investigating Google video chat. Anyone have any thoughts on if it's better? Or indeed, more open?

XMPP to skype?

[Andtalath]

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.

Re:XMPP to skype?

[mr_jrt]

I really don't see that being the outcome. The Skype stuff will probably just be in parallel to the XMPP stuff. In fact, I wouldn't put it past Skype to try and get Facebook to shut down the XMPP stuff so more users have to use Skype clients to even text chat outside of the Facebook website. Big companies like walled gardens and proprietary protocols.

What I'd have much preferred to have seen would be a XMPP-video based feature, a-la Google's GMail/XMPP Jingle video. Incidentally, does anyone have any idea why the GTalk client doesn't support it, but ruddy GMail and the N900 does? ...the mind boggles.

The lack of any decent Jingle clients on Windows isn't such a hurdle if Facebook were to use a browser plugin like GMail (or indeed, sort out using the same one).

I'm Not Sure...

[Nukedoom]

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.

Re:I'm Not Sure...

[Sockatume]

At the risk of overstretching an analogy, people used to plug everything into their light socket because they got electricity for the lightbulbs (facebook) and other useful applications for electricity began to appear later (???) which they needed to plug them in somewhere. (?facebook connect?).

I think "at the risk of" should've read "quite absolutely certainly".

Google must be quaking on its boots

[Virtual_Raider]

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.

Thank heavens for the progress in speech-to-text..

[ibsteve2u]

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.

of course it will play out like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Skype update for Linux?

[Wowsers]

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).

A perfect storm of lock-in

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Careful what you wish for

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Re:Rape Facebook in the ass

[GameboyRMH]

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.