Facebook, Skype to launch video chat service

Just as Google's next big thing Google Plus is all set to launch, Facebook and Skype are about to strike a deal that would bring the video chatting service to the social networking site.

With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising an 'awesome' new feature on July 6, Skype, which was recently purchased by Microsoft for a whopping $8.5 billion, could become a fixture on the world's largest social network.

The beta version of Google's social network, Google Plus, debuted last week to rave reviews, especially for its +Hangouts feature that allows for multi-user video chat.

At present, Facebook users update message and status through their profile, and share photos but the addition of video chat will bring an interesting change to their account.

Editor of Tech Crunch, Michael Arrington stated in the Next Week that Facebook, in collaboration with Skype, will unveil its video chat option which will be powered by Skype.

This move will strengthen Facebook's position in the social networking market.

Facebook at present is the most influential and one of the biggest social networking sites in the world having over 500 million active users.

This isn't the first time that Skype has been linked to Facebook.

Back in September 2010 the same rumour reared its head and this March it was reported that talks had resumed between the two companies.

Citing an insider source, Techcrunch announced the news, describing the powered-by-Skype Facebook video chat: "The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component".

"It's not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype.

"But it's clear that there's very deep integration between the products, and from the user's perspective, the product will be an in browser experience."

Official word will come out tomorrow when Facebook holds an event at its Palo Alto headquarters.