Facebook started today video calling in cooperation with Skype. Last week google started their social network google+ with hangout (googles video calling).
I blogged in September last year about Skype and FB working together which is now reality, but how good is it?
What is better?
Facebook video calling requires to download a plugin and is not available at mobile devices like the iPad. To start video calling you need to go to http:// www.Facebook.com/videocalling and set it up by downloading a plugin. After the plugin is installed you can open a chat with a Facebook friend and click then in the chat on the camera icon which will call the person. The video call is only 1to1, you can't invite multiple people to a conference call. Future enhancement will be to call from Facebook other Skype users who have no Facebook account. Facebook is as well considering to offer paid calls to landlines or cellphones.
It is expected that video calling in the near future (when Facebook releases their iPad app) will be possible on mobile devices like the iPad, using as a middleware a Skype mobile app or at least code. Skype has no iPad app yet and the delay of the iPad app might has to do with potential Facebook integration.
Google Hangouts currently requires you to download the same plugin that also powers video chat within Google Talk. However, Google is working on making both Hangouts and Google Talk itself work in the browser, without the need for any plugins. This will be done in part through a new framework for realtime communications (read: text, voice and video chat) dubbed WebRTC that the company open-sourced in May. WebRTC is supported by Mozilla and Opera, and Google started to integrate the framework into its Chrome browser earlier this month. “Work has started to move Google Talk completely to WebRTC,” it says on the project’s web site.
At that point, users won’t need a plugin anymore to use Google Talk, and the same should eventually be true for Hangouts.
Google hangouts does allow video conferencing and it is done very easy, just drag and drop the people into hangouts.
Comparing both services, google is so far the winner in terms of video quality and video conferencing. However FB has a user base of 750million and you can instantly call your FB friends if they have the plugin. If they don't have the plugin they will be prompted to download in order to start video conferencing.
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Google Plus has hangouts where people can video chat with multiple friends in one go! Facebook has yet to match this feature! Facebook only has been able to implement group chats but certainly not video chats with multiple users within one chat. Right now there are 750 million users on Facebook and they are happy to use Facebook services, whereas Google Plus is going to need to pull people off of Facebook, wean them off and convince them that Google plus has better features and functions that beat those on Facebook. That's the only way they can get people to come and use their services rather than the big boy Facebook.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Plus has hangouts where people can video chat with multiple friends in one go! Facebook has yet to match this feature! Facebook only has been able to implement group chats but certainly not video chats with multiple users within one chat. Right now there are 750 million users on Facebook and they are happy to use Facebook services, whereas Google Plus is going to need to pull people off of Facebook, wean them off and convince them that Google plus has better features and functions that beat those on Facebook. That's the only way they can get people to come and use their services rather than the big boy Facebook.
ReplyDelete