Rumor: Facebook developing VoIP calls à la Skype

[Emil]

A few Facebook users have started seeing a Call button randomly show up when they visit their friends' profiles. The new button doesn't seem to do anything, but it's not too big of a stretch to guess that Facebook wants to start doing VoIP calls.

Facebook likely will not develop the technology on its own. After all, the social networking giant has been working on deep integration with Skype to deliver SMS and voice/video chat using Facebook Connect for the last four months, if not longer. With the release of Skype 5.0 for Windows three months ago, we saw Facebook phonebook and browsing integration in the new Skype client.

Will we soon see Skype integration on Facebook? Admittedly, nothing actually suggest Skype in these leaks, but we're hoping for it anyway; these screenshots are easy to fake, but we don't really see any motivation to do so.

The image above is courtesy of AroundThe.Net. Another user also saw the button appear and sent in a slightly different screenshot to The Daily What.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/42176-rumor-facebook-developing-voip-calls-la-skype.html

 

[treeski]

Facebook LOVES to get itself integrated into as many places and devices as possible. However, I don't think they like integrated other services into Facebook. As such, I highly doubt they'll integrate skype. That being said, if whatever VoIP service they create is anything like their chat service, I can't see myself ever using it.

 

[Emil]

treeski said:
Facebook LOVES to get itself integrated into as many places and devices as possible. However, I don't think they like integrated other services into Facebook. As such, I highly doubt they'll integrate skype. That being said, if whatever VoIP service they create is anything like their chat service, I can't see myself ever using it.

I see what you're saying. Maybe they will just use Skype's technology under the hood? Only time will tell.

 

[Guest]

Hope they outsource, they cant even make an instant messenger function that is reliable.

 

[andreasf93]

#Guest is right, fix chat first..

 

[matrix86]

treeski said:
Facebook LOVES to get itself integrated into as many places and devices as possible.

Tell me about it. They got their grubby little hands on my favorite file sharing site drop.io and then shut it down..........bastards...

 

[Guest]

Skype has the ability to show your Facebook newsfeeds.... so... i imagine it is likely that they would go with the Skype technology to go with friend calling.

 

[nismo91]

it'd be great if they collaborate with skype so I can chat with https on and have good voice / video calls with extra features i.e. screen-sharing and conference video call.