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Comment by phereford | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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