Facebook unveils video calls and group chat

Mark Zuckerberg has just unveiled a number of new Facebook features online via a live stream.

And as most people had already guessed, the big centrepiece of today’s announcement was the introduction of video calling (in conjunction with Skype).

Zuckerberg began his presentation by stating that Facebook might not be everywhere yet, but he more or less implied that it will be over the next half a decade.

Looking to the next five years, Zuckerberg said social apps would be the focus for Facebook over and above reaching that billion user milestone and then beyond.

The number of active users on Facebook – he confirmed this is now 750 million, rather glossing over this as if it wasn’t important – didn’t excite him as much as the exponential growth of the material people are sharing on the social network.

Since a year ago, Facebook users are sharing double the amount of material with each other (four billion items in total, in fact, Zuckerberg claimed).

Facebook video calling comes courtesy of a fully integrated Skype app. While announcing this, Zuckerberg had a dig at companies who try to do everything themselves (like, ahem, Google) and espoused the philosophy of farming specifics out to already-proven experts such as Skype.

Microsoft’s purchase price for Skype also now looks perhaps slightly less giddy than it at first did (slightly, we stress).

Skype on Facebook looks very simple to use, and just a matter of clicking a call button to launch a video chat session.

Group chatting does exactly what it says on the tin, allowing multiple people to engage in a real-time conversation via instant messaging. The chat system itself will be overhauled, too.

It’s interesting to note that video calling and group chats are two of the big banners Google+ was waving about last week upon its announcement, and Facebook has pretty much steamed straight in with its reply.

Although Google+ video chatting will be set up for multiple folks, whereas Facebook’s Skype-powered offering will just be one-to-one – to begin with, anyway.

Zuckerberg wouldn’t be drawn on the subject of exactly what he thought of Google’s new social project, saying it was too early to judge anything yet.