Did Skype just preannounce Facebook deal?

The long awaited partnership between Facebook and Skype finally became real — seconds ago Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement at Facebook offices earlier this morning. However, someone at Skype was a tad over-eager to share the news and tweeted it out about minutes before Zuckerberg got on stage. Anyway for the first time in nearly 16 days I am going to log into Facebook and try Skype.

Today, we are excited to announce that Skype’s partnership with Facebook goes even further, as we are now making it possible to video chat with your friends right from within Facebook. This is an exciting step for us as it represents Skype’s first big step on the Web, and because we know this has the potential to unlock even more conversations and make the experience on the Web even more social.

The partnership with Facebook makes fantastic business sense for Skype and gives us an unprecedented opportunity to offer Skype’s voice and video calling products to more than 750 million active users on Facebook.

Together, we’ve collaborated to create a great user experience — with Skype providing an optimized version of its software and Facebook embedding the Skype calling experience deeply into their site, allowing Facebook users to enjoy the many benefits of video calling. (Skype blog)

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