The new version of Skype rolled out on Oct. 14, and the company popular for its Internet video conferencing services is making a concerted push into social with a Facebook infusion.
As we suspected, using Facebook connect to log in, you’ll be able to see your Facebook News Feed, chat with your Facebook friends, post status updates, which are synced with those on Skype, message, comment, and like your friends posts and updates–all from within the Skype interface.
On Facebook’s end, users can now place VoIP calls to their Facebook friends’ mobile and land lines, and provided that their friends too have Skype integration, users could also place VoIP-to-VoIP calls for free.
Another big feature with Skype’s newest version is free Group Conferencing Calling, which allows up to 10 users to call into a single conference over VoIP.
The Skype roll out also features a new interface and dashboard, which has a feed of all of your friends’ Skype mood messages.
The most resonant feature here is the Facebook integration. As Skype readies itself for an IPO, the Facebook move is going to be a huge rung in the ladder. Why? Because it makes Skype more pervasive. It integrates it into a platform that we use on a day to day basis–actually, the platform that just surpassed Google for the place where we spend most of our time on the net. Facebook is where all of my friends are online. It’s where I store most of my contacts. Now that I can access the via Skype, I’m more likely to call them with Skype’s service.
