ABC7 Tech Blog

Last Question

How will we manage all this sharing as it proliferates?  One is proliferation of apps.  Another is mobile - on the go sharing.  Sharing in small groups.  What Facebook has done is focus on groups.  Majority of users don't want to take the time to configure these things by themselves (creating groups or accepting friends).  The network does the work for you.  

The trend of these small groups driving the most sharing is not the trend we're seeing.  Apps is the biggest thing (driver), and mobile is the second largest driver.  

Event is over.  Blog is ending.  We'll have more on ABC7 News at 4 and 6pm.

 

More Q&A

You will get a ring and a pop-up when someone is trying to establish a video call with you.  Your webcam will not be activated unless or until you accept the invitation.  (That is a model that Skype already uses.)

What about Facebook mobile?  No, video calling not available yet.  

Think of this a mini-Skype client.  

What's the current overlap between Facebook and Skype users?  Nobody knows.  

It's the same free Skype service but streamlined for Facebook.  Building up the road map for the future, and it might be other existing Skype features, such as group chat.  Skype is now owned by Microsoft, and Zuckerberg says that gives him confidence of a long-term partnership.  MS and FB have been "friends" for a long time.  

 

Wrapping up - Time for Q&A

This has to be one of the shortest, snappiest product events Facebook has done.  Started 30 minutes ago, and the formal part is wrapping up.  Time now for questions from reporters.

What about group chats?  Zuckerberg is saying we're just announcing one-on-one video chats now.  I wouldn't rule anything out, he says.  The intimacy of one-on-one chat is powerful, says Tony Bates of Skype.  

 

Tony Bates, CEO, Skype On Stage

Tony Bates, the CEO of Skype, is now speaking.  Over 300 million minutes a month of video per month traffic on Skype.  

Focus on Video Calling

You can get to Video Calling with one click.  Call connects immediately, and you're off and talking.  (If that's true, Facebook could become a major conduit for Skype video calls.)

Launched already to millions of users.  They're doing a demo with the development team at Facebook Seattle.  

Your least technical friend can now connect a video call easily.  No separate accounts, no separate website to go to.  There is a small download involved.

To download, you click "set up," then it downloads the software, and you're ready to go in under 30 seconds.  "World's easiest one-click video calling."

 

Digging into Group Chat

50% of Facebook users are using Groups.  With new features, if your friends are online, you can click to invite them to an instant ad-hoc group chat.  If they're not online, they will get a summary of the conversation later so they can see what they missed. 

New Design - if browser large enough, it will provide a sidebar listing of friends who are online and those who aren't available.  One click access to those you access most.

More on Video Calling

The social interaction is so important, he wants to leave the apps to independent entrepreneurs and vendors.  He has this belief that they will do better than a company like Facebook trying to do a million things.  It will enable developers to create world-class apps.

Zuckerberg is now turning things over to one of his project managers.

 

More News

Group chat:  You can already form a group chat but he wants to introduce ad-hoc creation of chat groups.

New Design:  Improving navigation to find people so you don't have to do multiple clicks to get to buddy list or to go through friend photos.  

Video Calling:  Doing this with Skype.  Symbolic of the way we're going to do these things, he says.  

Here's the News

He's announcing Group Chat, New Design and Video Calling.  

Exponential Growth

He's plotting out how sharing has grown in Facebook over time with the addition of new features: shared profiles on Facebook in 2004, photos in 2006, newsfeed in 2007, platform apps in 2008, like comments in 2009, like buttons in 2010, groups in 2011, and messages.  

4 billion things shared every day, he says.  He says this will give context to what he's about the announce.