Facebook Video Chat is Here

In giant step towards improving communications and the value of their product, Facebook launched a new video chat service. This new chat service is provided to Facebook via Skype. You may ask why Skype?  We’ll Microsoft purchased Skype a few months back and Microsoft is a heavy investor in Facebook…you connect the dots.

You may ask, how do I use the new Facebook video chat? The new Facebook service is easy to use if you already have a web camera.  Go to Facebook’s chat feature as you would text chat.  In the chat menu bar you’ll see their new video icon.  Click it The first time you use the video chat service, you’ll be asked to download and install an EXE file.  Do so, without it it won’t work.

Here’s the issue I have with Skype, and now Facebook; there is no way to tell if the person you are wanting to video chat with has a webcam.  On Google’s video chat tool, they tell you is someone in your contact list is web cam enabled.  It would be a great feature to have in Skype and Facebook.

I would expect future enhancements to add  mutli-user video chat capabilities.

If any of my Facebook friends see me online, give it a try. In the meantime, check out Facebook’s video chat page.