To answer some of the speculations that were brought up - the partnership will create a Skype widget within Facebook (not necessarily the desktop tool that was mentioned), allowing two people to talk face-to-face (not the 'big party' some were hoping for).
The widget does not require Facebook users to download a specific service from Skype before video calling each other. Users can instead download a plug-in for the video chat tool, which takes between 10 and 20 seconds, in order to start talking face-to-face.
Although this definitly means great things for Facebook, and further enhancement of their social mission of connection, I wonder how will this translate specifically to advertisers on the network? Do you really think people would be able to chat with a representative of a company they "Like" for instance? That will require memebers of different companies to be part of your chat display which I don't think is the case right now.
But since I know Skype does advertise, and different ads do pop-up when I skype with people, I am sure the same method could be applied to the Facebook-new-video-chat.
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Appropriability of innovations on the internet and the battle of the internet giants
After the big "surprise" has finally been revealed on Wednesday by Zuckerberg, I wanted to make a comment on what seems to be an ever fierce battle between the internet giants.
In fact Facebook’s video chat has been revealed just one week after the release of Google+. Google+ is a social networking service that included the possibility of video chatting with one or more friends, which was supposed to threaten the primacy of Facebook. However how appropriable are really innovations on the internet?
Only 1 week later Zuckerback fires back at Google with the new application that many of us in the class are discussing these days.
Google still states that its service is superior, since it offers the possibility of video chatting with more than one user. However they well know that this superiority is vain and the blow is hard to absorb.
So also for industry new entrants: Have a good idea and the giants will copy it in one day!
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