LEAK: FACEBOOK VIBES MUSIC SERVICE

Software guru Jeff Rose had his curiosity piqued yesterday with the proper launch of Facebook Video Calling, and rather than just being satisfied with things working, he took it upon himself to see how exactly things were coming together under the hood. Turns out, the program grabs a startlingly small download link called FacebookVideoCalling.jar, which in turn uses LiveConnect to allow the Java applet to fetch a few other things. This enables the program to source your Facebook user ID (as well as an application ID), and from there, the installer has permission to use two things: a video chat plugin called "peep," and something else dubbed "vibes."

Curiously enough, only one of those two were launched to the world, so logical skeptics are obviously opining that Facebook has a connected music service up its sleeve. 'Course, there's no indication that said service will actually use the Vibes moniker, but we could definitely ponder worse titles

FACEBOOK LAUNCHES SKYPE POWERED VIDEO CHAT

As rumored, the world's most notable VoIP service is set to become exceedingly integrated with the world's most notable social network. Skype has just thrown up a teaser page for v5.3 for Windows (and v5.5 Beta), noting that Skype and Facebook will aim to provide "the best of both worlds."

Zuck is primarily announcing three main things today: group chat, a new way to chat ("an easier way to find someone who is online") and Skype-enabled video chat. Oh, and the tiny, tiny fact that there's now 750 million Facebook members. What's notable is just how easy it is to fire up a group chat (or send transcripts to group members who miss out) and get a video call going using your existing Skype contact list. A single click is all it takes, and we're told that it'll be rolled out to everyone "over the next few weeks" in 70 different languages. The new chat design will be scalable based on your browser size, and the company made a point to mention that it'll be listening closely to user input in order to iterate as it moves forward.

Tony Bates stepped up to the plate, and noted that over 300 million videocall minutes a month are going through Skype, and at peak times, over half of its traffic is video. He also noted that the technology behind it was "tough" to construct, but somehow it managed to hammer this whole thing out in around six months via joint development. There's also talk about future "paid products" in due time, and it's strikingly clear that this partnership isn't going to fade anytime soon. If you're looking to take a dive yourself, hit up the source links below for the Windows applications, and wear that F5 button out over at Facebook's homepage if you're more of the "in-browser" type.

Oh, and if you're curious about mobile -- video chat isn't active on that front yet, and Mark's not spilling any details on "when." To quote him on a question of time tables: "We'll see."

LEAK: FACEBOOK TO LAUNCH IN-BROWSER VIDEO CHAT ON SITE

According to an anonymous source interviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook is going to introduce video chat next week, and that service will be powered by none other than Skype. And while the service will be browser-based, it's also said to include a desktop component. We'd say none of that sounds too fantastical -- video calls would be a logical extension of Facebook chat, and let's not forget about the $240 million Microsoft invested in the site back in 2007. What's more, Facebook sent out invites for an event next week, where Mark Zuckerberg was clear the outfit would unveil a new product from its Seattle team. That's in Microsoft's backyard, of course, the invites themselves have chat icons on 'em, and, most tellingly, that Seattle office has been snapping up engineers specializing in desktop software.

RUMOR: SKYPE LAUNCHING A VIDEO CHAT APP

Skype has a website up with a "What's Next" campaign running on it. It shows random videos of outdoors with the tag line "I wish I could share moments like these." Could this be a teaser of a Skype video chat app? Guess we have to wait until either CES or the Mobile World conference to find out for sure.

RUMOR: FACEBOOK TO LAUNCH VIDEO CHAT

Facebook may be about to introduce a video chat feature if evidence found in the social network’s site code is to be believed.

Tal Alter from Green Any Site was working on a Facebook application when he came across an object in the Facebook site code called VideoChat. The options listed with the object made it clear this was for a video streaming service (see image above), and it even contains references to Skype.

Further digging by Tal found hooks for support in Internet Explorer, plugin support for ActiveX, and links for the Skype SDK. He also discovered Facebook is bucket testing this feature with certain groups of users as the object wasn’t appearing every time Tal refreshed the page he was looking at.

All the evidence points to Facebook introducing its own video chat platform as part of the social network, or at the very least allowing access to video through 3rd party solutions such as Skype. [Geek]