Facebook held a media event Wednesday (06/07/2011) morning to unveil ‘something awesome’. That something awesome is that Facebook is adding a group chat feature, and the ability–in partnership with Skype–to conduct video calls from within Facebook.

I’m yet to try the service myself but watched most of the coverage on LiveStream.com last night which covered the key concepts and an overview as to where Facebook is heading.

It will be interested to see how Google will respond with their new, Google+  service and whether this can compete with Facebook. Also, not forgetting Skype/Microsoft – will we see the extension of this new Facebook Video Chat appearing on our XBOX Live service too? Would make sense given there is a large camera on top of XBOX called ‘Kinect’

The consumer wont only benefit from these new video services but also businesses, expect to see more small / medium businesses adopting these technologies in order to improve collaboration between teams and suppliers.