Bring Your Social Network To Life

Back in July, Facebook video calling powered by Skype was launched. Today we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Facebook has reached yet another milestone with the launch of Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows allowing you to conduct a Facebook-to-Facebook call from within Skype. This new development in the Skype-Facebook partnership is the latest example of how Skype is removing communication barriers and making it easier to connect with friends, family and business colleagues. Our approach to social is about personal connections with people. We are on a mission to connect over one billion people and our continued partnership with Facebook brings us one step closer to this goal.
Initiating a Facebook-to-Facebook call from within Skype is quite easy; all you need to do is connect your Skype and Facebook accounts. Then, select a Facebook friend and hit the video call button in Skype- your friend simply picks up the call from Facebook. This new feature lets you maintain social connections with your Facebook friends and compliments previously announced features such as being able to see when your Facebook friends are online, read their status updates and IM them all from Skype.

Besides this great new Facebook feature, additional new features added to Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows including video rendering giving a smoother video experience for Mac users and group screen sharing for Windows users with a Premium subscription (group screen sharing is currently available for Mac users). Users who are chatting one-on-one will also be able to screen share with live video streaming.

We're excited about these new enhancements and we would love for you to download the latest version of Skype so you can bring your social network to life with Skype.

Make free calls to some Canadian businesses with Skype

If you use Skype on Windows, you can now call some Canadian businesses for free -- with just one click. Thanks to an agreement between Yellow Pages Group and Marchex, you can make free calls to approximately 370,000 Canadian-based businesses advertising with Yellow Pages Group.
Here's how it works:
If you have the Skype Toolbar plug-in installed you'll see a blue 'Free Skype call' button in place of the phone number wherever it appears on websites. When the call button is clicked, the Skype software launches and the call is connected - at no cost to the caller. To see how it works, watch this video:

And, if the business you want to call hasn't signed up for the program, you can still call them at Skype's great low rates.

Advertising in Skype

Today we announce something new – the launch of advertising in Skype, which will appear in the Home tab in Skype starting this week.
The Skype experience is our first priority, which is why we we’ve taken a lot of time working through and testing what kind of advertising would work best in the Skype environment. In fact, some of you may have seen some test ads from our friends at Rdio in the last month or two. As we roll out ads on a wider basis, we expect to continue to test and learn a lot more, and make any necessary adjustments along the way.
We believe that advertising, when done in the right way, will help us continue to invest in developing great products.
Here’s the detail of what we’re doing:

• We’re working with some great advertisers, including Groupon, Universal Pictures, and Visa.
• Ads will appear in the US, UK and Germany and advertising sales for Skype are initially focused in those markets.
• You may only see ads occasionally. Our initial plan is to show an ad from one brand per day in each of the markets where advertising is being sold.
• The ads will appear in the Home tab in Skype for Windows, and we may experiment with ads in other areas as well.
• The ads won’t interrupt your Skype experience. You won’t suddenly see annoying pop-up ads or flashy banner ads in middle of conversations.
• We may use non-personally identifiable demographic data (e.g. location, gender and age) to target ads, which helps ensure that you see relevant ads. For example, if you’re in the US, we don’t want to show you ads for a product that is only available in the UK.
• You can opt out of allowing Skype to share this non-personally identifiable demographic data with advertisers from the Privacy tab in Tools ▸ Options.

Here’s an example of what the ads will look like:

The Skype experience is paramount and we are committed to learning as we go, continuing to evolve the offer for advertisers and to developing great products that enable you to connect whenever you’re apart.

Skype Users Invited to the Coca-Cola 125th Anniversary Happiness Celebration

Today marks the Coca-Cola Company's Quasquicentennial anniversary, and the company is celebrating 125 years of "sharing happiness" with a live streaming concert in Atlanta's Centennial Park. We are proud that Coca-Cola is choosing Skype to help spread the word through an ad placement running today on Skype Home, inviting you to connect with your friends and family on Skype to get them to got to their site to watch the live streaming concert.

Take a peek at the Coca-Cola ad on Skype here.

And, be sure to invite your friends and family to watch the online concert today May 7th from 12:00 PM EDT to 4:00 PM EDT, with special performances from One Night Only, Natasha Bedingfield, Ne-Yo, K'Naan, Kelly Clarkson, and more.
We at Skype relate to "sharing happiness" because that is what so many of you are doing everyday on Skype. So please join us in wishing Coca-Cola a Happy 125th Anniversary, and tune in for their happiness celebration.