Rumour:Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership?

Posted by Richard Kastelein in Breaking News on September 29, 2010  |  0 Comments More from this author  |    |  Follow Richard Kastelein on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

All Things Digital is reporting in an exclusive story that Facebook and Skype are allegedly working on a deal that would integrate Facebook Connect with Skype accounts. That's half a billion Facebook accounts essentially marrying, half a billion Skype accounts. 

Facebook has an open API and Skype is about to launch an SDK for Connected devices, including TVs and Tablets. This should blow open the doors to some truly innovative Social TV applications in the future. Panasonic Viera Cast is already carrying Skype in their new models of TV sets. 

Actually, according to sources close to the situation, Facebook and Skype are poised to announce a significant and wide-ranging partnership that will include integration of SMS, voice chat and Facebook Connect.

The move by the pair–which have tested small contact importer integrations before–is a natural one for the social networking giant, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users, across a range of media.

Facebook’s goal, according to sources: To mesh communications and community more tightly together and add more tools to allow users to do so.

Since it was not going to create an Internet telephony service of its own–kind of like not creating a mobile operating system–Facebook has apparently turned to the Web’s Internet telephony leader.

Interestingly, Facebook has previously tested a video chat product.

Skype had 124 million people using it at least once a month and 560 million registered users, which will be bolstered by the 500 million Facebook users who will now be able to use it more seamlessly within Skype.

In 2010, a report by TeleGeography Research stated that Skype-to-Skype calls accounted for 13% of all international call minutes in 2009. Out of the 406 billion international call minutes a total of 54 billion were used by Skype calls.

ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom,[106] and the United States. In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), Middle East-Africa (67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent).

This could truly be a marriage of giants. If the rumour turns out to be true.