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Facebook and Skype rumored to be working on partnership


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This would bring a whole new dimension to interacting with friends on Facebook, allowing for voice chat, SMS and possibly even video calls.

This could be a major win for Facebook, which has a limited chat function that, up to now, has been unable to compete with other chat services, such as GTalk. Skype has over 500 million registered users with over 124 million using the service once a month. Add to that the 500 million users Facebook has and the cross flow of users could help both companies boost their bases and popularity.

The new features should go live on Skype 5.0 which is coming out of beta in a couple weeks.

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Laura Khalil
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Laura is a tech reporter for Digital Trends, the editor of Dorkbyte and a science blogger for PBS. She's been named one of…
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