Facebook on Wednesday announced a video calling feature that will be provided by Skype, the well-known Internet video chat program.
The move comes shortly after Google launched a competing social network that also features a video chatting program.
The new chat feature will show up on Facebook as a “call” button at the top of every user’s profile page. By clicking that button, Facebook users can talk to each other over webcams. That feature has already been rolled out to some users and will continue to become available to others, the company said.
This is “the world’s easiest one-click way” to chat over video, Facebook engineer Philip Su said at a press conference Wednesday.
Facebook also announced updates to its text chat features, including a way for users to chat with several of their friends at once. And the company updated the total number of people who are using the site to 750 million.
That move also seems to mirror a feature of Google+, Google’s new social network, which is seen by some as a genuine competitor to Facebook.
A video feature called “Hangouts” lets Google+ users chat over video with several friends at once. The new network also has a feature called “Circles,” which lets people organize their friend lists into groups.
Facebook’s new video feature does not allow for group chats.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, took subtle jabs at the new Google network, saying Facebook provides the best way for people to organize their friends into groups — with minimal effort.
“If you think about it, it makes it so that your networking community can do the work of organizing your communities for you. You don’t have to curate,” he said.
He also defended the company’s one-on-one video chat.
“The vast majority of video chat is one-on-one chat. … I just think this is super-awesome,” Zuckerberg said.
(Source: CNN)
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7 Responses
ok. im gonna get it out of teh way because i know people are gonna say this. the proceeding statements in no way reflect my personal opinion.
HOW COULD A FRUM TORAH SITE POST ABOUT FACEBOOK! FACEBOOK IS TUMAH! UCH! YESHIVAWORLD SHOULD BE PUT IN CHEREM FOR THIS! IM TERRIBLY DISAPPOINTED!!!
there…ive said it. so now you dont have to.
Isnt this website intended for an audience as your name implies the “Yeshiva World”? Facebook is the most despicable website in terms of tznius, so how can you report this here? Would you report something about how nice Maddona sings?
Same goes to your videos which is on YouTube, do you expect your readers who are from the “Yeshiva World” to have access to it? Everyone agrees that its much worse than TV.
1st of all do mr bombmaniac and mr ysr314 even know what facebook is all about before you start rambling on
2nd of all alot of people need to use these for parnasa reason even when they are part of the yeshiva world
Hey guys, cool it. The Yeshiva World is well into Facebook. And I don’t mean the web site, I mean those who feel themselves part of the yeshiva world. When will grown adults realize that the war will be won by education not prohibition.
see?
yup. i use facebook every day although google plus is looking really good…ive been part of google plus since the firld test release on the 28th…so im probablky gonna drop facebook in favour of google plus when its finally open for teh public…and i was being facetious
Comment number 2-
Put your guns away. This is modern society that we are in today. We use facebook to keep in touch with humanity.
This is a good article and I am more informed.
You can go back to the middle ages and eat your bagels in a thunderstorm. America needs facebook and facebook is a huge benefit to many of our Jewish services. Including Kiruv.