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Facebook intros video chat; Obama answers to Twitter
Photo by Paul Sakura, Associated Press
On Wednesday, Facebook held a press conference it had been teasing for a week, promising to unveil something very cool on the heels of Google’s launch of its “+” social network service.
Turns out that the rumors were right: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Video Chat to the service. Users can engage in Skype-powered video chats. Zuckerberg also introduced a group chat feature (but not group video chat) and said more changes to Facebook are coming as the company looks beyond contact management and more toward helping users share more content online.
Perhaps it would be uncharitable to suggest that the features Facebook just added are ones you could have had using AOL Instant Messenger way back in 2004, but clearly the killer app here isn’t the video chat technology but the critical mass of contacts people have on Facebook: there are 750 million active Facebook users, Zuckerberg said.
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated Press
Just as the Facebook founder was wrapping up his live-streamed presentation, President Barack Obama was starting his first Twitter Town Hall on the other coast.
For an hour, the president took questions from Twitter users after posting his own Tweet asking participants to suggest what they would or keep in the government’s budget. The Twitter event was also live-streamed and was moderated as an online Q&A. Technology for the live chat was provided in part by Austin’s Mass Relevance.
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