Barnes: Obviously with the Google+ announcement last week we are thinking about matching that offering. We have already built the group video chat functionality as a premium service on the Skype desktop client. And because Skype is a modular system, it would not be difficult to add the funtionality. Because the technology has already been built it would not take much work at all to add it to the Facebook product.

(Barnes adds that another module that is ready to add to Facebook video chat is the ability to do video chats with mobile devices. Barnes gave me the distinct impression that Facebook will soon be adding both group video chat and mobile video chat in the near future. Even though those features are not ready to launch now, Facebook needed to announce the core part of the service NOW, as a way of answering the Google+ announcement of last week and to take the media spotlight off of Google social networking.)

I asked Facebook's Su if group and mobile chat are coming to Facebook soon. He said the same thing the Skype people said--that it would be relatively easy to do from a technological point of view. Su says, however, that Facebook has not been working on those features yet. Su says he and his team have not been designing their product to match the features in the Google+ Hangout video chat service, but rather to make the one-to-one chat service extremely easy to use for the non-tech-savvy.

PCW: Will I be able to make calls to cell phones and home phones from Facebook using Skype?

Scott Miller (Skype director of global business development): Yes, we will soon be adding the capability to make calls via the PSTN (public switched telephone network) from Facebook in the near future.