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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Facebook still requires downloading a plugin to use video chat, so it has the same barrier to entry.

No, Facebook will install it automatically. With MySpace you had to do a separate download to get the MySpaceIM client.

I told my younger sister about Facebook's announcement today, and she didn't really care since she already had Skype to video chat with her friends.

I have Skype and Facebook both today too. I have like 8 addresses in my Skype book. I have about 200 friends in Facebook, which includes almost everyone I talk to. I don't think my setup is all that unusual.

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I used Facebook video chat this morning, and it required a download that you then had to run in order to proceed.

So to be clear, you had to go to a seperate webpage, download the plugin, go back to Facebook, and start up the chat session? I want to make sure that the old MySpace experience current FB experience are the same.

Nobody is claiming that Facebook's experience is as bad as MySpace. I'm sure it is much better, but that's irrelevant because Facebook isn't competing with MySpace. It's competing with Google+ and Skype, ironically.

I don't think Skype is a competitor to Facebook at all. Facebook has had a good partnership with Microsoft for several years and have finally found a good social element that Microsoft brings to the table (Skype).

Skype is great for video calls, Phone calls...and thats about it. Facebook does everything else.

Skype may have a good relationship with Facebook, but their products are still indirectly competing. Now that Facebook supports one-to-one video chat, I have no reason to download or register with Skype. Facebook went through great pains to keep user data anonymous from Skype. If Facebook is successful in getting its users to video chat, Skype will effectively become just a technology provider. Once that happens, Facebook could replace the underlying Skype technology with something developed in-house, thus killing Skype entirely.

Of course, given the good relations that Facebook has with Skype/Microsoft, I doubt they have any desire or intention to kill Skype, but the two services are certainly competing for the same users now.

Facebook's video chatting feature has no influence on my decision to use Google+, but it does influence my decision to use Skype.

I do understand your reasoning and logic behind your belief. If you were to ask someone now: "What application do you use to video chat with?" the answer is most likely going to sway heavy to Skype. If you ask that question in 3 to 9 months time and that answer has not changed, then Skype will be just fine.

Personally, I don't like the idea of video chatting through Facebook. I use skype exclusively to video chat because its what I am accustomed too, it's the application I trust. Trust being the keyword there because I do not trust Facebook.

This whole particular subthread is about the old MySpace experience vs the current FB experience and why small differences in the experience can yield different outcomes.

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