The latest release of Skype does a neat job of integrating with Facebook. Skype, the pre-eminent VOIP service, and Facebook both have over 500 million users, so there must be a significant overlap in their customer bases, so a collaboration between the two makes a lot of sense.
Facebook now appears in Skype 5.0
There are two aspects to this integration:Â Skype 5.0 pulls in your Facebook contacts and it shows your Facebook News Feed
Skype’s latest version adds your Facebook friends to your contact list. If they are on Skype as well, then you will get the benefits of the free VOIP telephony and messaging. Additionally, Skype now provides a Facebook phonelist – showing the number of any Facebook friend whose privacy setting allows you to see it – which makes it very easy to make a Skypeout call to them. So easy it is just one click!
You can now also view your Facebook News Feed within Skype, and update your status right there. I’m not too sure I’d want to keep tabs on Facebook this way, but maybe it will grow on me. The main advantage of doing this is the Skypeout button appearing in your friends’ posts (where privacy permits) so you can easily call them if you’d prefer to do this rather than just comment.
While not earth-shattering, this is a useful step forward by Skype. But what do you think? Are these features you will use – let me know!