Facebook launches Skype video chat, group chat

By: Aseem Gaurav on July 7, 2011

As expected, social networking giant Facebook has launched a video-chat feature powered by Skype. The video chat product, is browser-based, so one need not download Skype to chat with friends on Facebook. The revamped system now includes a sidebar and it automatically appears when you open up the browser.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new video calling feature during an event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.

The new feature includes an improved group chat feature which allows for a multi-person conversation and the capability of one-on-one video calls with friends.

 Zuckerberg also confirmed that Facebook now has 750 million users and they share four billion items such as photos, links and status updates on the site every day.

"We've been cranking on projects the past six months and have a lot of fun stuff to roll out. We have 750 million users now and it is still growing quickly. But the thing growing faster is the amount of sharing per user,” he said.

IM-like text chatting is quite popular on Facebook and the company will introduce a more prominent sidebar that shows the people a user chats with the most, Zuckerberg said.

The announcement by Facebook comes within a week after Google Inc announced its own social networking service dubbed Google+.

Facebook bosses said the company will keep on working with partners like Skype and at the same time build its own programs to enhance the social network.

The video calling service will be universal by next week, but in case you want it now then go to facebook.com/videocalling.

Facebook and Skype aren't making money directly from the video calling service, but in the future they will add premium services carrying charges.

Skype-powered video chat coming to Facebook: Reports

By: Aseem Gaurav on July 2, 2011

The tech world is buzzing with the possibility of social networking giant Facebook launching a new video chat feature built in partnership with Skype, the popular video chatting and Internet calling service that Microsoft bought for $8.5 billion in May.

It is not clear whether the new feature would require a new software or if it will just work with Skype already installed on the computer.

Both of these companies have been working for quite some time now for the inclusion of various Facebook features into the Skype service.

The move is also seen at countering Google’s recent move to launch Google+ which many say is going to give touch competition to Facebook. It must be noted that Google+ offers a feature called Hangouts which allows users to initiate group chat sessions. After you set up a Hangout, you can call your friends from the social circle on Plus and then any one of them can join you on the chat session.

At the moment, users can’t avail the video chat service on Facebook as for this they need to log into Skype, Apple’s FaceTime software, Google Talk and now Google+ Hangouts.

Facebook’s timing is important at this point, because the company does not want Google+ to grab all the eyeballs.

Facebook protest forces Israeli companies to cut cheese prices

By: Aseem Gaurav on June 30, 2011

Everyone knows the power of Facebook and it is no guesswork what this social networking medium can achieve and contribute to the society around the world. The latest example is about a Facebook protest in Israel, where consumers threatened to boycott cottage cheese if the prices were not lowered. The result was dairy manufacturers lowing the staple by some 25 per cent.

For this, first a Facebook event was created, calling for the boycott of the Israeli staple until prices dropped. Then within two weeks over 105,000 people joined the campaign and all of them resonated the same concern of unreasonable and unjustified increase in the price of cheese.

Given the sheer size and scale of the protest, the large Israeli dairy companies that control the market, finally agreed to lower the price.

 “Israeli consumers have said what they have to say and have demonstrated their ability to bring about unprecedented change in this country,” Tnuva, which was one of the companies that decided to lower the prices, stated in a press release.

The organizers identified themselves as ordinary Israelis who work for a living and are raising families but are suffering under of the weight of rising cost of living in Israel.

Facebook users drop in Canada, US

By: Aseem Gaurav on June 13, 2011

The number of people using Facebook during May fell in the US and Canada, a website that covers the social network said on Monday. The slowdown in growth would be second time in the row, even as the social networking site approaches 700 million users on the global scale.

In the US, the site lost about 6 million users while the figure in Canada was about 1.52 million,  according to data gathered from Facebook's advertising tool by the site Inside Facebook. The surveying agency treats a user as a monthly active user – someone who logs on their account at lease once a month.

The latest data is an indication that Facebook has reached its peak in countries where it was first a hit – and some of its early users have stopeed using it.

In May, Facebook added around 11.8 million, much lower than the April figure of 13.9 million. But these figures are much lower in comparison to the 20 million which the site usually added over the past year to take it to 687 million "monthly active" users.

Till date, the US is still the largest market for the social networking site. But the report noted that its growth kept its momentum with gains in developing countries like Mexico, Brazil and India, each of which picked up about 2 million users from May to June. Globally, Brazil was among the fastest growing markets for Facebook.

Facebook testing real-time "Happening Now" feature

By: Aseem Gaurav on June 10, 2011

Facebook has started testing a new real-time feature called the “Happening Now” in a sidebar to the right of news feeds.

The new feature displays things like recent comments, a list of what their friends are sharing and check-in notifications. So far the feature is available to a very limited group of users.

The real-time sidebar is seen by many as an initiative of Facebook to integrate instant social networking.

"We are currently testing a feature within News Feed that gives people the ability to see what their friends are commenting on and 'liking,' as these actions are being taken on Facebook. This test includes a small percentage of Facebook users, just a fraction of a percent. In the coming weeks, as we learn more from this test, we’ll keep making improvements and may expand it to more people," Facebook wrote in its blog.

A significant feature of the “Happening Now” sidebar is that it allows users to view how their friends interact within the Facebook network without leaving the main newsfeed.

However, users have noticed that there is a problem of double posting of information between the main News Feed and the Happening Now section, which hopefully the company will work out over time.

It is now in the preliminary phase of the rollout so it is not visible to all the users.