Facebook Video Calling

        Clearly war has been declared by Facebook…! Recently after the launch of Google’s latest social-networking platform ( Google+), yesterday Facebook launched the Video Calling feature to an answer to the Hangout feature of Google+. Now the Facebook users will be able to make video calls, all thanks to the Facebook/Skype partnership.

         After the explosive growth of Google+ within the first week, Google’s Paul Allen suggests that their new social network Google+ had 1.7m users worldwide after just one week, which was launched on 28th June. As Google already have huge traffic and other products like GMail, Googledocs and blogger etc. so it can give Facebook a run for its money by being a complete package. So by this launch Mark Zuckerberg has clearly hit the nail right on the head in competition to the Hangout feature of Google+ which I think was a killer feature.

Facebook announced three new features:
•    Group Chat: This lets you message with multiple people in one window. So To include more friends in your conversation, simply select "Add Friends to Chat".
•    Updated Chat Interface.
•    Video Calling.

How to set up video calling on Facebook:

To start video calling now, visit www.facebook.com/videocalling and click on "Get Started".

Once you’ve clicked the button, go through the process and then install the app.

 After you’ve installed it, you can video chat with any available friend by clicking on the video camera like icon on the top of the chat box. NOTE: your friend will also need to install the video calling app.

But if your friend is unavailable or if they don’t answer then you can record the video message.

Google’s HANGOUT vs Facebook’s Video Calling:

           There’s no group video chat in Facebook . According to Facebook one to one video chat is more popular on Skype rather than group chat and to get the group chat feature one as to pay 4.49$ that is included only in the premium account. So it makes sense to start there.

           But on the other hand Google’s new hangout product is all about group chat and up to ten people can use it at once and the main thing it’s totally free. This is an amazing feature as the most active person among the group chat will be in the center and it shifts among them automatically. But it’s not that good for one to one video chat.

           So for now, there’s really no comparison between the products. Facebook video chat is great to talk to friends one at a time. Google Hangouts is great for group chat. There’s no real overlap between the products at all. But…I wouldn’t be surprised to see Facebook launch group video chat down the road.

           Also The Facebook video calling feature is experiencing some initial hiccup. The error message that Facebook displays, reads, "The software that powers video calling is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." These can be due to the hardware and/or software incompatibility.