Is Facebook Preparing to Launch Video Chatting In a Partnership with Skype? | Hacker News Reader

Is Facebook Preparing to Launch Video Chatting In a Partnership with Skype?

blog.greenanysite.com

21 pointsaniket_ray8 comments

Considering Facebook news feed having a strong presence in the latest version of Skype, one might assume this is a 2-way partnership and yes we will see Skype inside Facebook.

Don't think anyone has done this (embedding or integrating Skype video chat) before? Technically it has not been possible, I believe?

Might be one more step towards Skype headless client / SDK, which has been talked about for years, but never materialised.

Sure looks like it! Hopefully not an acquisition.

I doubt that either Facebook or Skype could afford to buy the other.

The day I have to login to Facebook to use Skype would be the day that I found another service to use.

I really doubt they'd do that. Far too many people using Skype for business purposes. I need to be able to talk to people who aren't my facebook friends.

The problem is, Skype is (as of my knowledge) really the only available, actively developed, cross-platform client offering both audio and video connections, let alone being free software. If you abandon Skype, you either have to abandon video-phoning with friends on other platforms or you have to change platforms yourself. As sad it is, there simply is no working free substitute for Skype right now.

You're right, though at that point there would be quite a bit of demand for a solution. I already pay for unlimited calling w/ Skype and I'd be happy to move that $ to any solution that meets my needs.

Ekiga (http://ekiga.org/), at least, is both free software (by definition, not free to download binaries) which runs on at least windows and unix-like OSes, supports audio and video connections, works over open standards (SIP and H.323) and even lets you get a free SIP account at ekiga.net.

The uniqueness of Skype is overstated, the principal advantage is the same that using Facebook has over using any open standard social networking, everyone you want to contact is on it. So Skype and Facebook are a good match, both are walled gardens with limited (or no) interoperability or support for open standards.

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