There could be nothing better than to reach nearly a billion people through Facebook. The social network has become a target for tons of digital entities trying to leverage the social network. We will not talk about brands and business, rather online services and the most recent example is that of Spotify. Yesterday, Skype made a more social move by enabling Facebook to Facebook Calls via the Skype Client.
Skype already had Facebook integration in its clients. However the latest move follows the announcement Skype made back in July regarding powering the Facebook video chat feature. The platform is widely used and offers Facebook the perfect service to roll out or integrate video chat functionality within the social network’s ecosystem.
The functionality is pretty simple, and all that needs to be done by users is to integrate their Skype account with that of Facebook. Once that is done, the users’ friend list is added as contacts to their Skype client. This will enable users to view the status of their friends, send instant messages or make voice calls from within Skype. The said features comes to the new Beta 5.4 for the Mac and the Beta 5.7 for Windows. Other features include video rendering for the Mac users and group sharing for Windows users with premium subscriptions.
While the announcement is definitely a good one for building a stronger connection between Skype and Facebook, it is weighed heavily in favor of Skype in our opinion. The reason being there are over 800 million people currently on Facebook and not all have Skype accounts. Also the same users don’t necessarily find the Facebook Chat client friendly enough. Skype in this regard offers quite a lot of value to those who are more inclined towards a better chat experience, adding video chat feature is just one big advantage it has in its favor. We consider this to be a step in removing communication barriers for the users, one that will prove to be beneficial for the end user. Following is the video about the Skype and Facebook chat feature:
