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Technology

Video Chat, An Old Technology, Makes It To Facebook

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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The press has given the joint venture between Facebook and Skype to deliver video chat a large amount of coverage. Facebook Video Calling does not offer anything new. Skype has had video links between customers since 2006, when the company licensed On2 Technology’s video compression software. On2 in now part of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). Skype has 170 million users. All they need is a cheap video camera to use the service.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) promotes its two-way video product which works on the iPhone and iPad. Tens of millions of people who have the Apple hardware can “see” one another with just a click.

AOL (NYSE: AOL) is supposed to launch a video chat product soon. Some versions of its AIM product, used by tens of millions of people, have video capacity. The same holds true for other IM providers such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

The Facebook announcement shows how companies can make the old seem new again. Video phone calls were available with expensive phone sets in the 1970s. The products never caught on because too many people could not afford them. But, the technology was in place nonetheless.

The Facebook/Skype video chat feature may not do very well. It is the latest in a long line of very similar offerings. Facebook may have 750 million users. Among Skype, AOL, MSN and Apple there may be nearly that many people who can “talk” to one another in living color already.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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