Facebook Rings Skype For Social Networking Links

Facebook and Skype are working to allow Facebook users to send SMS messages and make voice and video calls to friends and contacts via Skype, according to AllThingsDigital.

Facebookers will be able to sign into Skype through Facebook Connect, which allows users to sign into third-party Websites with their Facebook accounts. The integration is expected in Skype 5.0, scheduled for an October launch.

Facebook has grown to more than 500 million users, many of whom are spending more time socialising than searching on Google. Even so, Facebook wants to increase the stickiness quotient, particularly as it has been working to build out its social advertising capabilities. One way to do that is to empower the site with more communications capabilities.

Facebook has had chat capabilities for more than two years, allowing users to see which of their contacts are online and send them instant messages. A glaring omission has been voice communications and even face-to-face video chat.

Integrating with Skype, which has 560 million registered users of its own, would provide these capabilities for users without forcing Facebook to build its own VoIP capabilities.

A Facebook-Skype VoIP integration would also be an answer to communications and collaboration capabilities offered by Google. The search engine offers Google voice and video chat and Google Voice phone-management software, which has recently been integrated with Gmail.