Facebook’s Awesome Product Revealed: Video Chat via Skype; Google+ Already Calls That Hangouts

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Word on the street is that Facebook is going to announce a new feature next week, which is Skype video chat integration into Facebook. Yes, that’s definitely a great feature for a popular social networking service like Facebook, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call it “awesome”.

Video calling has been around for ages, and anyone interested in actually using such communication magic can do so via a number of smartphones, tablets and computers. And Facebook is not really needed for that. Some will say that it’s pretty cool to have the opportunity to actually call your Facebook friends via Skype, without leaving the webpage. And they would be right from a certain point of view, since not all your Facebook friends may also have Skype accounts, and vice-versa. Add to all these an important ingredient, mobile integration, and Skype for/with Facebook on Android and iOS devices could be an important rival for all other video chat services out there.

But will FaceTime, fring, or, why not, even regular Skype users (and there are plenty of other VoIP programs out there) simply move to VoIP talking, video included or not, via Facebook. I don’t think everyone else involved in this will want to simply rollover and let Facebook play a huge part in VoIP calling. Not to mention that not all the carriers out there may want their customers to circumvent regular calls and, while doing so, to consume plenty of bandwidth with VoIP calls.

I’ll also remind you that last year’s “awesome” product was supposed to be Facebook email, but that product never killed the competition nor did it significantly improved our communication skills. Or did I miss it? In my opinion, integrating Skype in Facebook is not an “awesome” product as certain CEOs would describe it. In fact Facebook is coming out with this new feature next week but after Google already created plenty of buzz with Google+. Inside Google+ there’s this little service called Hangouts, which will basically offer your video chatting capabilities with the friends in your Circles. So no matter how awesome Skype in Facebook would be, Google beat Facebook to the punch with the Google+ launch.

Of course Google+ is still in beta, so it’s not like everyone will use it yet for massive video chatting purposes. But will Facebook’s product be the final product. Will Facebook roll it out next week for all its 750+ million users? We’ll keep you posted once we find out more details on the matter next week, on July 6, when Facebook will share more details about the new feature.