So today facebook had a product announcement for all of us social network fans and freaks. One week after Google+ rocked our social media world facebook was expected to try to close the gap and pull out video chat.
fav today: facebook announcement API error
And well…the obvious happened. During an extremely boring (man, someone please give Mark Zuckerberg an introduction in presentation skills…or a copy of a Steve Jobs Keynote) presentation Zuckerberg announced video chat options for facebook (powered by Skype), a new group chat and a new chat design.
Text chat
The news about the current text chat are that you are now able to chat with group members instantly. According to Facebook 50% of all users use groups. I am not quite sure if this really is true since none of my friends uses these – quite often spammy – ‘innovations’. But nevertheless, that’s a new feature. Furthermore the chat design gets an update. It should be easier now to talk to your facebook friends and to see them all at once on the right hand side in a sidebar. Awesome…..#ironic
Video Chat
Yeah…the BIG news everybody expected today. Facebook now offers video chatting powered by Skype. So if you go on a profile of a facebook friend and if he is online at the same time you can simply “call” him and start to video chat instantly. Nice idea but after Google+ launched its Hangout feature last week still somehow lame. The disappointing part about Facebook Video Chat: No group chats are possible right now. While Google+ offers to “hang out” with different people, facebook only offers 1 on 1 video chatting. Just like Skype does….
Besides this lame introduction of video chatting I also was disappointed that there was no other ‘ooooh factor’. I, for example, would have loved the possibility to video (or at least voice) chat to pages. Sure this would need a bigger infrastructure..but what the heck…you guys are facebook, skype and microsoft. If not you, who else? (ummm… Google, probably).
Next 5 years…
Mark (Zuckerberg) announced furthermore what will be going on during the next months & years. Believing him the next 5 years will be pretty boring. But 5 years ago nobody would have thought about Google+ (or any further cool innovation) anyway. Marks future visions are unfortunately like his presentation style: extremely boring.
After all facebook announced what everybody expected, ranted a little against Google+ (nobody needs it, only for nerds, no trend for the future) and bored almost everybody (in presence or in the chat – when it finally was working). When finally the question about Google+ rose up he (Zuckerberg) talked a lot of bullshit and did not answer the question at all….signs of resignation and nervousness. Bottom line: Lame and disappointing. Dislike!
over there at google+....
