It turns out that the "awesome" feature is a set of new chat features to benefit the social networking giant's 750 million users, which were announced on Wednesday:
- Group chat redesign: Facebook has redesigned the group chat page is more fitting for wider screens, with a side bar of your most commonly-chatted with friends and whether they are online or not.
- Group-less Group chat: One of my biggest complaints about Facebook's existing Group Chat feature was that you had to have a group set up first. What if you just wanted to talk with a few friends about weekend plans? Normally you'd have to make a new group with those friends and chat from there. Luckily, Facebook has solved this by allowing users to create group chats without creating groups.
- Facebook + Skype: The biggest announce of the day centered on a new, Skype-based video chat. Unfortunately the chats are limited to one-on-one, but its still a big step forward for Facebook.
It's a solid set of new features, but right now the buzz continues to focus on Google+, which I will be covering more next week. The one thing I know for sure is that the social networking race is really starting to heat up.