In an attempt to steal some of Google’s recent thunder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference yesterday that was billed as the introduction of “something awesome”. He announced that a Skype-based video chat feature has been added to Facebook. The existing chat service has also been changed to make it easier to use and a new feature has been added to enhance group chats. Zuckerberg also mentioned that this was just the beginning of “launching season 2011” and that more announcements would be coming.
 

Google’s newly released social offering, Google+, which is currently available only to select users, offers a video conferencing feature that allows up to 10 users to join in a video call. Both Google and Facebook are banking that video chat will give people a reason to visit their sites more often and for longer periods of time. However, some early comments and reviews have been quite negative in saying that when comparing the two video chat services, Facebook comes up short.

This announcement is definitely a win for Microsoft though, considering that the software giant owns 1.6% of Facebook and they announced a $8.5 billion purchase of Skype in May.

 

It will certainly be interesting to see how the battle between Facebook and Google unfolds. Google+ has some very attractive features, but they have a long road ahead of them in order to capture the average Facebook user.