Social networking giant Facebook seems to be gearing up to launch ‘something awesome’ this week, in partnership with Skype.
The public has been left in the dark concerning what this something might be, but many speculates that it has something to do with another way to contact friends – video chat. What convinced media and tech bloggers to reach this ‘video chat’ conclusion must be the invites Facebook sent out. It has two chat icons, with one of the bubbles suspiciously sporting a silhouette of a person.
This rumored partnership of Facebook and Skype has been in the works since years ago but no notable product has come of it. Now that Google has made their own social networking platform (that looks very promising by the way) which has several features that can trump Facebook (you guessed it, video chat!), the partnership of Skype and Facebook now made more sense.
The upcoming launch of this new product couldn’t have come in a more appropriate time. The past few days have seen an increasing amount of anticipation in jumping in the Google+ boat. Facebook may well have a reason to feel threatened in this buildup of anticipation and momentum.
Google+, an up-and-coming social network that created a huge buzz online just after it was announced, is positioning itself as a tough competitor of Facebook. It boasts of more privacy, efficient topic search and video conference capability. Looks like Google finally got the social networking formula right.
And as if to further highlight how much Google+ ‘does not suck’, eBay is actually selling Google+ invites to the tune of $75! Talk about instant gratification.
Facebook and Skype has been pretty close these past few months, so close that Skype has already integrated Facebook in their desktop client. Now that Skype has been absorbed by Microsoft, the partnership made much more sense as they have a particularly strong common competitor.
Will Facebook suffer the same fate of other social networking sites that it has toppled on its ascent? With the public’s response on the soft launch of Google+, the idea might not be so farfetched.
At any rate, it’s never too early to take sides in this raging competition.
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