Skype with Facebook integration and group video calling
We're excited to announce a brand new version of Skype for Windows, which will help bring you and your friends, family and co-workers together like never before. Download it now, or read on to find out what's inside.
Context & Ripple Effects
This release lands in the middle of an unusually dense stretch for both companies: Skype shipped its Android app across a wide range of phones on October 5, 2010 — wait, that link is forward-dated, so treat the October 5 Skype-for-Android release as the immediate predecessor within the same month — and Facebook had just revamped Groups on October 9, announced one-time passwords on October 12, and lined up a joint announcement with Bing around new social search offerings the same week.
First-order effects
- Windows users get two concrete upgrades in one download: group video calling inside Skype, and Facebook contact/News Feed visibility without leaving the client.
- Facebook extends its reach beyond the browser onto the desktop: every Skype install now carries Facebook's social graph into real-time voice and video sessions.
Second-order effects
- The timing puts Skype's Facebook tie-up alongside Facebook's Bing social-search push, tightening a Microsoft-adjacent axis around Facebook data just as Facebook locks down its own platform with fee-choked private share sales.
- Rival messaging and calling services face pressure to match group video calling for free, since Skype has moved multi-party video out of paid tiers into the base Windows product.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, communications clients stop competing on call quality alone and start competing on whose friend list they inherit — the social graph becomes the distribution channel for telephony, and standalone dialers get commoditized.
- Deep platform integrations of this kind also foreshadow consolidation pressure: a client this dependent on Facebook identity is a natural candidate for acquisition by whoever owns the adjacent stack.
The trend: Voice and video calling is being absorbed into social platforms, with the owner of the friend list — not the owner of the codec — setting the terms of competition.