Last week, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters that the world's No. 1 social network was planning to "launch something awesome." Facebook fans found out what it was yesterday at a special news conference, during which Zuckerberg announced that Facebook — which has surpassed 750 million users — was launching two new features that might appeal to meeting planners: Skype-powered video calling and group text chat.
"Video chat has been around for years now, but it's still not an everyday activity for most people," said Facebook software engineer Philip Su in a post that he published on
Facebook's blog, detailing the new products. "Sometimes it's too difficult to set up, or the friends you want to talk to are on different services. So a few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window."
Although Skype offers group video calling from its own application — and so does competitor Google, which recently unveiled group chat via Google+, a new interests-based social network that the search behemoth is currently testing — Facebook for the time being will only allow one-on-one conversations. Still, meeting planners can use the feature as a business tool during the meeting planning process.
Group chat, or multi-person chat, can similarly be used during the meeting planning process to connect meeting organizers with vendors, speakers, exhibitors and other stakeholders. Because the feature will be integrated into Facebook mobile apps, however, it also has potential as an electronic tool that attendees can use to interact with each other during live meetings.
"Now when your friends can't figure out what movie to see, you can just add them to a chat and decide together," Su said. "To include more friends in your conversation, simply select Add Friends to Chat [from within Facebook's chat client]."
Facebook began rolling out group chat to users yesterday and will integrate Skype video calling into the social network within the next several weeks. Users can add it immediately, however, by downloading a free software update.