Facebook’s answer to Google+ : Watch the video!!

One week after Google+ Facebook teams up with Skype to add video conferencing (allows upto 10 callers in on video conference) to its website…FB has now officially hit 750 million users while Skype now has more than 300 million video calls users.

According to Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran “While integrating video calling will have little impact on marketers now, in the long term, it will mean Facebook, already the No. 1 place for online word-of-mouth, will be a crucial platform for marketers to engage customers, whether it's through video chat with fans or through new partnerships they form with Facebook on their own." With 4 billion things being shared on FB every single day, marketers certainly have enough eyes, ears and mouths to attract. But it also means that they have to work harder and harder to stand out and exploit the emerging social media sharing economy.

You can certainly envision a form of link up emerging from FB between video marketing, entertainment and consumer information. Social apps will be created to deliver personalised marketing content in video format directly to the consumer. As paid features are added to the FB ecosystem a lucrative money flow can be created. One idea proposed by Diane Mermigas, an editor at Media Post, “Facebook could use its super-powered distribution platform to create a new dynamic for charging, discounting and providing credits for friends who are sharing marketing and entertainment videos.” If FB is able to create such a monetary system it will change the dynamics of the online video industry – even Youtube, its major rival in video terms, doesn’t have a user paid revenue stream. Interestingly, Amazon is the only on demand video provider that has successfully used its social infrastructure to earn hefty revenues from its online video business (and that is one company that has the knowhow on how to capture consumer habits and exploit them to generate money.)

Add Netflix to the mix and the story gets even more interesting. Its aim is to develop social apps to increase its sales through use of social video sharing where people share and suggest movies to watch. And they are pretty serious about getting in first - The CEO of the Netflix was recently appointed to the FB board!!

With Skype in the process of being purchased by Microsoft for $8.5billion one thing we can be sure of is a Microsoft+FB vs. Google battle galore!!!

Source: Facebook Adds Video Calling, Group Chat

Awesome 'thing' revealed - Facebook and Skype

Following what Karishma and earbender were disucssing on Sunday, Facebook indeed launched yesterday its partnership in skype Brand Republic Reports.

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.