In the sea of Internet innovation, there are two big fish that we tend to see swimming the most: Facebook and Google.
And while other social media channels like Twitter are huge as well, the major trend right now is integration and moving towards conglomeration-type online hubs. Just look how Facebook expanded from simply social networking to multimedia and cross-platform integration. Meanwhile, Google's been dominant as a search engine and email utility and expanded with the addition of Google Instant and Google Talk/Voice phone and video chat.
Both companies have their strengths, and both companies have tried muscle in on the other one's territory. Google has gotten in on social networking with Google Buzz, and now Facebook has its sights set on Google with their developing partnership with Skype.
This is important because Skype is hands down the biggest player in the video chat game. Skype has already been integrated with Facebook to a degree, displaying which Facebook friends were on Skype at the time. Reportedly, this new integration will allow you to login to Skype with your Facebook credentials (nothing new there) and chat with your Facebook friends directly (definitely something new there).
Obviously, the 500-million-plus Facebook users won't see much of this new integration for a few weeks. But this is yet another step in the continuing race between Google and Facebook to establish Internet-wide dominance online.
