Facebook announced a video-calling feature on Wednesday in partnership with Skype, the popular Internet video-chat provider.
The move comes a week after Google launched a competing social network, called Google+, which also includes a video-chatting program.
Facebook's new chat feature will show up on the site as a "call" button at the top of users' profile pages. By clicking that button or finding someone in a new "buddy list" sidebar, Facebook users can talk to each other via webcams. The company began turning that service on for millions of users on Wednesday and will add it to more accounts over time, as it commonly does for new features.
This is "the world's easiest one-click way" to chat over video, Facebook engineer Philip Su said at the news conference here. The Seattle programmer was Facebook's only full-time engineer working on development, along with Skype, a Facebook spokeswoman said.
Can't ever accuse Zuckerberg and his company of being slow to the table with their incessant need to be "liked" by consumers. The partnership with Skype is a smart move and a natural upgrade to the next step in communication among friends. Whether or not it's a solid business move, I'm not convinced.
But Google has it, so a week later Facebook has it. Maybe he felt Facebook didn't have a choice.
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