Christensen was the vice president of emerging opportunities at Skype, a division of Microsoft. In that role, he was responsible for getting Skype into new platforms such as Internet televisions and set-top boxes. He was a big champion of Skype’s platform effort. On the eve of the launch of SkypeKit program, he told us, “One of the key pillars of the communications network is that it follows Metcalfe’s Law, and so to date with things like Facetime we’re talking about services with limited support for devices, while our strategy is to be on Android and everyplace else we can.”

Here is Skype’s official statement on Christensen’s departure:

“After six years in key leadership roles with Skype, Jonathan Christensen has left the company to enjoy time with his family and get energized for the next phase of his career. At different periods during his time at Skype, JC has led the Audio/Video, Core Library and Skype Developer Program teams, in addition to overseeing our platform and partner initiatives with consumer electronics manufacturers. Skype wishes him every success in the future.”

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The timing on this lawsuit seems a bit odd, but perhaps Sprint’s lawyers are now freed up after AT&T scrapped its bid for T-Mobile on Monday night. Maybe Sprint realized it is no longer going to have some kind of working relationship with the cable guys after they abandoned the wireless market and agreed to sell their airwaves to Verizon. Or perhaps Sprint just needs the cash because it realized Clearwire is going to be like that underperforming mooching brother who lives in the basement. It won’t be able to get rid of him, and he’s going to keep asking for money.

Whatever the reason, let’s hope we don’t have to sit through the endless articles laying out the patents and technical work-arounds. But for those who are interested in reliving the past or who missed it, here is a great resource for you. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on the No. 3 carrier. It looks like Sprint’s lawyers are cruising for work, and it certainly needs the cash.

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Want to pay less than $1 for phone calls? Shell out for an iPod Touch and make sure you’re near a Wi-Fi network. It’s possible with a new app from Gogii, the maker of popular messaging app TextPlus, which is launching a new service called TextPlus Free Calls that enables a host of devices, even Wi-Fi-only devices, to make and receive phone calls for free or very cheaply.

With TextPlus Free Calls, users will be able to make unlimited free phone calls to other TextPlus members. And because TextPlus connects to traditional PSTN phone systems, users can connect directly to regular phone numbers at rates starting at 99 cents for 40 minutes without a contract or plans. Free trial minutes will be available to users who sign up. Devices like the iPod Touch will now be able to serve as phone replacements through Text Plus Free Calls running over Wi-Fi.

There’s some caveats but it’s another sign that Wi-Fi calling is getting bigger and a lot easier for consumers. But it’s not just for Wi-Fi only devices:TextPlus can help cell phone users reduce their voice minutes to the lowest plan while running their calls over Wi-Fi and 3G data.

The iOS app, which is separate from the TextPlus Free messaging app, is available now and will be in the Android Market shortly. Users will be able to use one account across multiple devices and will be able to access their call history and voice mail from any device.

The move pits TextPlus against a growing number of IP-based communications competitors, dubbed NUVO or Network Unaffiliated Virtual Operators by Sybase.  Many of the group text messaging services fall into this category and a smaller number of providers also offer voice services, some that come with their phone number like Google Voice and Pinger’s TextFree and others like Viber that don’t. By connecting to the PSTN, Text Plus Free Calls can send and receive calls to and from phones that don’t use the app.

The rise of these services are forcing traditional carriers to rethink their business models. The messaging apps are helping wean users off SMS text messages by connecting users directly over the Internet. And voice services are increasingly offering direct connections that allow users to forgo highly reliable phone calls and monthly data plans, for pay-as-you-go voice services that can offer free or very cheap calls.

It presages a future where voice is just an app on the data network, something carriers themselves are also slowly learning. Sprint has teamed with Google Voice to let people use their Google Voice number while AT&T recently released an International VoIP calling app. Republic Wireless, a division of Bandwidth.com which connects Pinger and Google Voice to the PSTN, recently launched Republic Wireless, offering users a $19 a month voice and data plan that relies heavily on Wi-Fi calling.

Scott Lahman, CEO of Gogii, said carriers can still compete on delivering 4G and high quality, reliable phone service. But he said there is a growing market for simple voice calls that can connect people. And that will change what consumers need from their carriers: fewer or no voice minutes and lots of data. Carriers such as T-Mobile also appear to be responding, offering a plan with just 100 minutes and data.

“We’re on the cusp of the most interesting time in the brief history of mobile,” said Lahman. “The internet has not done its thing in mobile until recently.”

TextPlus, which launched in 2009 and has hit 20 billion messages sent to date, also provides social elements inside its communications apps. Gogii has raised $28 million to date including a $15 million round earlier this year.

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The San Francisco company has grown its customer base by about 400 percent this year to 75,000 developers, who build everything from group messaging and conferencing solutions to voice and text message notification apps and web-based distributed call centers. The Twilio platform lets developers plug in the basic communications components that used to come from traditional telecom vendors. Now, developers just pay for what they need and easily integrate a host of services without needing a strong telecom background.

Hulu, for example, was able to set up call centers on multiple continents within one month using Twilio. Twilio’s API is now the fifth most popular for developers, said Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Twilio, and half of all American households are now touched by apps using Twilio.

“We believe in opening up the black box of communication for developers,” Lawson told me. “People who wouldn’t have participated in communication because of steep technological or economic barriers are building things now.”

Twilio has been evolving the platform beyond SMS and voice services that hooked into old copper-based phone systems and this summer began offering VoIP services. It’s showing that it can grow even as old phone systems fade away and developers rely less on integrating text messaging and move to more app-to-app messages. The company got help from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, which established a dedicated $250,000 Twilio micro fund last year and has committed to a second round, this time with matching funding for developers provided by Ron Conway.

Twilio, which is up to about 85 employees, previously raised $15.7 million including a $12 million round last year. Lawson said the company is looking to hire more engineers and more sales and marketing people. He declined to talk about the financial details but said Twilio has been growing revenues substantially over the last two years.

As the app boom grows, it’s back-end infrastructure providers like Twilio that continue to thrive as they help enable more and more of the mobile apps flooding the market.

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The app was developed with communications and VoIP provider 8×8 and will work on Android, iPhone and BlackBerry devices, although many Android and BlackBerry models are not supported. You can check what devices work with the app here.

The new app will allow users traveling overseas to also take advantage of these rates when calling over Wi-Fi on Android and iPhone handsets. Once users establish an account, they can make phone calls right from their address book, with calls billed to their credit card. They will be able to manage their bill online.

It’s an interesting move for AT&T in that allows it to offer international calling to a wide range of users via VoIP. It shows that even the big boys can get into the VoIP market and offer cheap mobile calls overseas. But it also makes you wonder why AT&T couldn’t make this phone on its own.

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Just how will Microsoft make money off Skype? Microsoft CFO Peter Klein won’t say, exactly.

Microsoft closed its $8.5 billion cash buyout of Skype last week, and Klein, speaking on the company’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday, wasn’t ready to talk much about plans to capitalize on the popular VoIP phone service just yet.

But, he gave broad-brush indications of where Skype’s technology and features could end up:

Now that the deal is closed, we are starting the integration of Skype’s world-class services and global-networked platform across our portfolio of products and services including Lync, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Phone, and the Xbox platform.

Skype will be part of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices (E&D) business unit — home of Xbox — going forward.

Microsoft welcomes “the over 170 million people who rely on Skype for their voice and video calls on a monthly basis,” Klein said.

The 170 million number is interesting. By all accounts, the total Skype user universe is far larger than that.

“Highly engaged” Skype users spend an average 125 minutes on the service each month, he said. That could be an opportunity for Microsoft to bolster its online advertising business or to sell more premium (ad-free) services.

Analysts really wanted Klein to drill down into more detail but he deferred that discussion. Microsoft will start folding Skype numbers into its results in the second quarter. Overall, the company said it expects revenue for the quarter ending Dec. 31 to come in at $28.6 billion to $29.2 billion range.

When Microsoft announced its acquisition plans for Skype last  May, there was consternation among Skype users accustomed to its easy interface and inexpensive (or free) cost. A common question on Twitter was whether Microsoft would “ruin” Skype.  All that has calmed down ,but since the deal has been in the works, the competitive landscape shifted. Google+  and its hangout capability makes cheap video conference calling drop-dead easy and poses a major challenge to Skype.

Last May when the deal was disclosed, GigaOm Pro’s Michael Wolf wrote about how Skype could help Microsoft  make strides in home entertainment as a smart  TV and social networking platform for home entertainment. (Subscription required.)

Microsoft’s first-quarter earnings press release is here. SeekingAlpha posted a transcript of the analyst Q&A here. 

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With us moving away from single-purpose, 12-key-pad, mobile phones to more touch-centric Internet devices, the “voice” has been reduced to being an app. Sure, today, phone companies run that app and use traditional phone technology, but in the future, all voice communication could be from apps using Internet technologies.

On Wednesday, Juniper Research of the U.K. released a report that shows that by 2016 nearly four-fifths of 640 million mobile VoIP users will be making calls through apps downloaded on their smartphones, while rest of the calls could be over phone company networks. Even today companies such as Nimbuzz and Skype are enjoying tremendous success on smartphones, a trend I have written about many times.

Juniper forecasts that the number of mobile video callers will jump to 130 million by 2016, thanks to the introduction of mobile video calling services from most major companies and improvements in video calling technology.

Well, I guess Microsoft buying Skype makes perfect sense. Now if they could improve the user experience!

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It’s a shift that has been happening for years, and was accelerated by the launch of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform. Voice over IP (VoIP) companies began eating away at carrier’s revenues since the early and mid-2000′s. Rebtel, a five-year-old mobile VoIP company that enables users to talk for free via the web, has been profitable since 2010 and has a $75 million revenue run rate, said Rebtel founder Hjalmar Winbladh.

Still, carriers continue to be very reliant on voice for their businesses. Winbladh said that voice and text messaging currently provide 85 percent of revenues and 95 percent of profits for carriers. The carriers all over the world have been able to maintain their voice revenues partly through a combination of government policy and the ecosystem of monopolies, said Winbladh.

Add to that ecosystem potentially some unsavory practices. Winbladh said that two carriers in Germany had blocked Rebtel’s service in their markets, and one did so after it purchased a competitor to Rebtel. It’s an “interesting business model. . .I’m not sure it’s legal, to be honest,” said Winbladh.

But while carriers can try to slam small companies, they’ll have a harder time brushing off the web giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft. These companies will be the next-generation of voice players said Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of mobile application company GetJar. In addition, these web players will be able to provide web innovation and the communications services that consumers want.

Voice applications from the phone companies have been “too limited,” and consumers are looking for voice to be able to be integrated with communications and social networks like Facebook, said Laurs, adding “Facebook is the ultimate communications service.” As voice shifts to the web it will become “an add-on service,” or yet another API that is added to a data service, said Laurs, for example, adding voice to social gaming. Voice is being disaggregated across the web, and the carriers better get used to it.

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Cisco may have stopped focusing on core markets and let interlopers take ground, but when it comes to the PBX and corporate telephony market the global economic malaise didn’t help. According to data out today from Telegeography, revenue from enterprise telephony equipment sales has fallen by 4 percent during the second quarter of 2011 when compared to sales for the same period last year. Those sales include PBX/KTS systems revenues, voice gateways and IP telephony.

Cisco has kept its market share steady at 30 percent, while Avaya has gained 3 percentage points to hit 22 percent market share. However, in some areas Avaya has taken over Cisco’s top spot. From the survey:

By segment, the most notable shift in the 2011 vendor ranking is Avaya, which overtook Cisco as the market leader in IP telephony in Q1 2011, and continued to lead the market in Q2. NEC and Panasonic remain the clear leaders in the declining PBX/KTS segment, while Cisco dominates the voice gateway segment with a market share exceeding 80 percent.

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Interactions not communication

Why is Skype spending so much money on a relatively small company with a relatively small user base when compared to Skype? The answer can be found in some of my posts from earlier this year. When contemplating Google’s ongoing battle with Facebook, I wrote:

…instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions…..To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.

In today’s hyper-connected world, in order to be relevant, a service provider or a device maker has to figure out how to constantly engage its end users and in doing so, keep their attention and thus ensure the ongoing need for their offerings. As ngmoco CEO Neil Young recently told me, the longer you have an opportunity to engage with the customer, the more opportunities you have for more monetization.

Skype so far has been reliant on its instant messaging and voice (and video) call offerings to engage its hundreds of millions of users. However, the mobile phone changes that behavior – shifting the focus to more instantaneous services such a GroupMe in addition to a combination of other communication mediums – SMS, mobile phone, Beluga, Twitter and Facebook Messages in addition to email.

Skype, which has been one of the earliest beneficiaries of the iPhone boom, has seen lightweight group messaging clients like GroupMe gaining in popularity, and it’s right to be worried. GroupMe, which uses Internet telephony start-up Twilio’s back-end, could have easily added voice chats to the system and someday, even video, thus becoming an instant competitor for Skype.

So why did GroupMe sell out?

And as good as their future looked on paper, I’m pretty sure increasing competition from Facebook must have spooked the guys at GroupMe, who only last week told Ryan Kim that they wanted to remain independent.

The fact remains that the sands of time were against GroupMe. The oncoming competition from Facebook Messenger, Google’s Huddle and most importantly Apple’s iMessage were going to fundamentally increase the pressure on GroupMe, which in turn decided that it was better to find comfort in the arms of a much larger company.

What Skype gets out of the deal

For starters, Skype can use GroupMe and other apps it’s buying up to build a communication platform for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 offering. That would make a lot of strategic sense. In addition, it would allow Skype/Microsoft to have a hedge against Facebook.

Even though Skype is a partner with Facebook for now, they need to be worried about the future, as Facebook will eventually compete with them. Just as Skype reduced voice to an application on the Internet, Facebook is slowly reducing voice calls to an afterthought in a multi-communication world.

When Facebook announced its video chat offering in partnership with Skype, I wrote:

Even if we buy into the argument that Facebook can get Skype a lot of new customers, I still think it is a highly risky strategy, and it runs the risk of the company losing a grip on its customers. Let’s remember that at one point even IBM thought Microsoft was only going to help them sell more computers and make more money.

Skype has a big subscriber base, but it can’t bet on holding on to them forever. At one time, AOL and Myspace were companies with hundreds of millions of subscribers and now they are a quickly vanishing shadow in muddy waters. In buying GroupMe, Skype for now gets a chance to build a new mobile experience and hopefully find engagement and attention.

Will that be enough for Skype?

From a long-term perspective, Skype as an entity is going to have an identity crisis. It cannot figure out whether it wants to be a friend to the consumers or whether it wants to be a corporation-focused collaboration company.

The muddled, confusing and terrible user experience of its desktop applications only highlights that dichotomy.  And that identity confusion is so aptly reflected in this blog post from company CEO Tony Bates.

This acquisition is another step towards our vision to provide a global multi-modal and multi-platform communications experience. It complements our existing leadership in voice and video communications by providing best in class mobile text-based communications and innovative features around group messaging that enable users to connect, share locations and photos and make plans with their closest ties. This latest acquisition, coupled with our acquisition of Qik earlier this year, augments our role as an innovator in driving unique mobile user experiences.

I think the big decision Bates & Co. need to make: decide who they really want to be!

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Previously the company’s killer app was its hooks into the old copper-based phone system that can be expensive and complicated for smaller companies to learn to use and write to. It has gained huge success and helped open up voice for a wide variety of applications. Hulu, for example built its customer service call centers on Twilio. Now folks can add VoIP to the mix, says Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio.

“When it came to the PSTN, there are a lot of use cases where that doesn’t make sense,” Lawson said. “To use it people must bring their own device or cell plans.”

Instead, Twilio will now try to out-Skype Skype and the myriad other VoIP services out there with the added bonus of continuing to offer access to the older networks as well. So if you are on your computer shopping and you have a click-to-call button, instead of an agent calling you back, you can call using VoIP. This is cheaper for the developer that pays Twilio for access to the networks and more seamless for the shopping site’s customer. It also gives developers more options to build VoIP calling into their apps.

Late last year Twilio raised $12 million in additional funding, and it has become a hot back end provider of infrastructure, so this move makes sense. Not only is the world moving rapidly to IP but the old-school copper network that Twilio makes easier to use is also on its way out the door. Some experts believe that by 2018 it will be gone. Plus, LTE networks will be VoIP as well eventually. Twilio is just anticipating the future.

And that future isn’t voice, but apps that provide the context for the best means for communication. It may be voice, it may be video or it may be text, but Lawson (while not committing to anything beyond expressing interest in video) expects Twilio to be there on the back end enabling developers to offer communication with a minimum of fuss.

“Voice is an experience. It is more than just the mechanics of how we are communicating,” Lawson said in a phone interview. “The nature of the communication and the context of why we are communicating determines how we communicate. That’s why the apps are driving the next wave, because that’s where the context comes from.”

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On this new Alive Web, what we miss doesn’t matter. What matters is the connection and the interactions. We get online to socialize instead of posting status updates, just as we would when we would go to our favorite club or a neighborhood bar.

Last week when I first saw Google+, it became obvious that Google Hangouts was the next big killer app of the Alive Web. Jenna Wortham gets it right when she deems Hangouts as a killer feature of Google+. Having said so myself, I am not going to disagree.

Why? Because Hangouts is about having a conversation, albeit over video. It isn’t a chat (in the traditional Internet sense) and it isn’t a conference call. Hangout with folks you want to connect, even for a few seconds, enjoy an immersive interaction and then move on. It is just for hanging out — just like some of the early killer apps of the Internet such as BBS, IRC and AOL Chat Rooms. And for that precise reason, Hangouts is very different from the video chatting offered by Skype and Facebook.

Having spent nearly a day with the Facebook/Skype video chat, I have to say, that it is shockingly predictable and conventional, two words I rarely use in the context of Mark Zuckerberg’s baby. I have a theory why Facebook wasn’t daring enough with its video offering and chose the safe route — it is worried that it would distract from Facebook’s core behavior of sharing. I mean if you are all hanging out with your friends, why share photos, links or video clips or random status updates?

As I said earlier — if Google wants to beat Facebook, it would have to do social differently. It would have to circumvent Facebook’s two main behaviors — sharing and use of activity streams. In so doing, it would have to figure out a way to encourage interaction, immersion and engagement, both on web and on the mobile. Hangouts is a good start. And for the Alive Web, it’s a big boost.

Recommended reading: How Google+ Hangouts works.

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“For us, the most important thing — our goal is a billion [users] and this will help us get there, ” Tony Bates, chief executive officer of Skype said at a press event earlier today. He is betting that Facebook will be able to get Skype’s paid products in front of more people. “I did allude to the fact that there’ll be a way to get Skype paid products,” he said.

“Today is the start of a long strategic partnership which will include exposure to free and PAID products for all Facebook users. Makes perfect sense for us,” said Skype spokesperson Brian O’Shaughnessy. He pointed out in an email that CEO Bates wants Skype to equal video calling, and this helps the company get to that point — and will help make ”video is fundamental to the new social construct.”

Skype had added support for Facebook in its Windows client recently, but it is still not clear how that integration has worked out, both in terms of generating revenues and more engagement between the two services. In the fourth quarter of 2010, Skype averaged more than 145 million connected users per month. Facebook has about 750 million members.

Same Skype, Just Thinner

Bates pointed out that Facebook’s video chat was using the same peer-to-peer technology that is used by Skype. “Same free Skype service, but trimmed down to fit within Facebook,” is how he described it. In order to use the service, you need to download a java plugin — if you don’t have it installed you are invited to a video call, and given the opportunity to download the plugin (you don’t need a Skype account to use the service).

Even if we buy into the argument that Facebook can get Skype a lot of new customers, I still think it is a highly risky strategy, and it runs the risk of the company losing a grip on its customers. Let’s remember that at one point even IBM thought Microsoft was only going to help them sell more computers and make more money.

Facebook could learn a lot more about Skype’s customers through this partnership, and then try and woo them into Facebook and obviate the need for Skype all together –theoretically speaking, Facebook could replace Skype with its own video-chat backend and no one would notice. In fact even today, if you don’t look hard enough you will miss that Skype logo when the chat window opens up. It is there, and yet it is not there.

Good for Facebook isn’t Great for Skype

Furthermore, even if Facebook plays clean and straight, how much does Skype get from this deal. My skepticism stems from the fact that Facebook is skewed almost entirely towards average folks, while Skype’s premium video services are largely used by professionals — whether they belong to a startup or work for a big company. More importantly, if Google’s Hangout becomes popular like I predicted, Facebook won’t have an option — it will need to roll out group video chatting. Guess what is Skype’s premium service? Group video chatting & conferencing. And let’s not forget, Skype has some challenges around monetization, without Facebook.

Some of my fellow Skype watchers feel that it is not such a bad deal. Alec Saunders, a veteran of internet telephony argued that since Skype is too quirky for his wife and too weird for his mother, Facebook’s version actually might be a good thing for Skype usage and will get them to a billion people.

The questions is to what end? Andy Abramson who blogs about internet telephony believes that in the end it will be about Facebook vs Google. To that extent I agree. Ironically Skype, which at one point wanted to turn carriers into dumb pipes is being turned into a dumb pipe itself.

Don’t get me wrong — I am glad Skype and Facebook friended each other. For the record, I had suggested last year and again earlier this year that Facebook buy Skype. Why?

In one swoop, Facebook would dominate what I’ve maintained is both the new age and classic social networking. They will have people’s credit cards; they have their real-world phone information; and in the end, they have a better, more useful, social graph than Facebook itself…..A simple search box inside the Skype client, and the two companies are starting to take attention away from arch-nemesis, Google.

Obviously that didn’t come to pass. Instead, the next best thing happened. Facebook’s rich grandpa – Microsoft decided to spend $8.5 billion on Skype. And somehow I feel that Zuckerberg just got a sweetheart of a deal.

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Tom Evslin, who has spent his entire life in telecom and data services industries, believes it’s time for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to come to grips with the reality that people are choosing cellular or Internet voice over traditional phone systems. He points to a recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics that notes that by 2018, only 6 percent of the U.S. population will be using the public switched telephone network (PSTN), which to non-telecom geeks means: your home phone from the phone company.

Evslin, who is on the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for the FCC, notes in a blog post that “without continued government support, the PSTN would probably disappear before 2018 since the carriers’ cost to maintain the many miles of copper and the rest of the system doesn’t go down nearly as quickly as revenue from subscribers declines.”

Here were the seven recommendations by TAC to FCC as per a blog post on Avaya’s blog:

1. Target 2018 as the end of the PSTN.
2. Develop a timeline to ensure smooth transition which addresses stranded assets
3. Assure that mobile and/or broadband replacements are available everywhere PSTN is currently provided. The need will be greatest in role areas.
4. Update the National Broadband Plan to support the PSTN transition.
5. Change the Universal Service Fund (USF) funding and spending to support universal coverage and other social goals.
6. Further investigate emergency service impact to assure a suitable replacement capability.
7. Investigate incentive program for mediation devices to bridge older devices without PSTN or towards purchasing new equipment (consumer focused)

As he points out that the Universal Service Fund (USF) that subsidizes the PSTN in rural areas is going to continue to shrink as more and more people opt for non-PSTN calling options. What happens to the telephone network then?  Tom recommends that perhaps that sunset-ing the PSTN should be synchronized with the National Broadband Plan. It would make sense, though as far as I’m concerned NBP is a white elephant. That said, Evslin is right in saying that perhaps it’s time to start thinking about lower-cost options to the old-fashioned phone network.

And when we are doing that, it’s time to think not about the past but about the future: what communication means in the 21st century and not in terms of something that started almost a century ago. Wednesday’s Facebook-Skype partnership is a good reminder of that new reality.

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He told GigaOM that the actual job, which began about six months ago, involved a lot of slimming down of Skype’s native client and making it work in a browser, creating the back-end integration between Facebook and Skype and scaling up Skype’s network to handle the flood of traffic.

“We anticipate some really heavy usage, well in excess of what Skype sees today,” Rosenberg said.

Cut the client fat

The first big challenge was taking what is normally about a 20 megabyte native PC or Mac Skype client and stripping it down into a less-than-3-megabyte runtime, which works in conjunction with a JavaScript plug-in. Skype essentially ripped out much of the user interface and unneeded features of its Skype client to create a slim piece of software that could be quickly downloaded. The runtime provides some APIs, and the plug-in delivers those APIs through Javascript for access to Facebook.

Facebook’s team built the chat icons and video buttons, and it handles the download of the plug-in. Skype takes over during the actual call, logging into the plug-in and runtime and relying on its existing infrastructure to complete the call.

Where callers have no name

Rosenberg said 98 percent of Facebook video chats are identical to traditional Skype calls, save for some small rendering code for the video UI. In order to access Skype’s network, Skype actually has to create an anonymous Skype login for each Facebook video chat user, even if he has his own Skype login. A Facebook user’s identity must then be mapped to the Skype login to ensure that the call can go through.

That was something Skype spent time to get right, to make sure users were connecting to the people they intended to call and that their personal accounts were not able to be accessed by others, said Rosenberg. ”There were a lot of security things we needed to do to make sure it would just happen as users expected,” he said.

Many browsers = headaches

Getting Skype calls to work in a browser turned out to be more of a challenge, because Skype had to take into account how browsers operated. One of the biggest issues was dealing with the fact that users often can have several tabs open with Facebook. Skype had to be able to handle each instance of Facebook and ensure that the different tabbed versions were able to communicate correctly with the runtime.

“We knew this would be an issue, but it was more complicated than we thought,” Rosenberg said. “It turns out there is just a lot of concurrency use cases.”

Another issue was dealing with different browser and operating system combinations, making sure Facebook video chat would work on all configurations. That testing, along with performance tuning, took up much of the last month before Wednesday’s launch. Even now, Facebook video chat doesn’t work on Macs running the upcoming OS X Lion operating system, which was seeded last week to developers.

Scaling up behind the scenes

On the back end, Skype has bought more servers and bandwidth in its data centers to handle the extra traffic it expects. It still relies on its peer-to-peer network, the same video and audio codecs, for transport, but it needs more infrastructure to scale up reliablity for Facebook and handle the handshake between the two networks.

One key decision has been to rely completely on dedicated supernodes to facilitate Facebook video calls and to bring them all into Skype’s own data centers or into Amazon’s EC2 cloud. Supernodes select Skype clients that often sit on the public Internet, act as directories that help guide calls through the P2P network, and are usually used during recovery efforts after an outage. The fact that Skype is taking this step shows that it is serious about getting off to a good start on Facebook.

More features to come?

Skype’s integration opens up some interesting possibilites for future video chat services through Facebook. Rosenberg declined to say if Skype video chat will come to Facebook’s mobile apps or if group video chat will come to Facebook’s site. He said that Skype just rolled out its Android app and is still working on ramping that up.

But he said it’s technically possible, as is group chat for the browser. Bringing group chat to the desktop browser, however, would require an update to the runtime, which was slimmed down by pulling out features like group video calls and instant messaging. It might take a little time, but I don’t doubt that we’ll see both features come in the future. Skype CEO Tony Bates said on Wednesday that the integration was a chance to introduce Facebook users to Skype’s paid products, things like group video chat.

You can read more about the Skype-Facebook integration on Skype’s blog.

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