The New Skype: Now with Facebook integration and group video calling

Skype launched a new version of its consumer offering today, integrating Facebook's News Feed and phonebook into the service and adding video calling for groups. The new Skype is for Windows users only.

The move is a significant one for the company, which has been focused lately on its efforts around business customers. On the consumer front, video calling has been getting more attention lately - notably, Cisco's unveiling last week of Umi, a home-based video calling feature that taps into the living room TV rather than the computer screen.

The integration with Facebook adds value to the service by enabling users to instantly connect - via video, voice or even SMS - with their networks of friends in the Skype interface. The company said that video calling accounted for about 40 percent of all Skype-to-Skype minutes used in the first half of the year. The company also noted that users spend an average of 520 million minutes on Skype calls every day.

The video calling feature, which remains in beta, is being offered as a free trial. The company did not address pricing for the feature after the trial period and did not say how long that free trial would last.

You can almost see the overlap of the two sides - consumer and business offerings - on the horizon. Group video calling is certainly blurring the lines. But the integration of Facebook is also interesting because business-centric Facebook copycats, such as Yammer and Salesforce's Chatter, are taking their cues from social products such as Facebook and Twitter.

Sure, some companies still block social sites on their networks. But, once Skype moves some ground on the Facebook integration for consumer, it's not a huge leap to think that a next step will be integration of tools such as Chatter.