Facebook Adds Video Chat – Does Anyone Care?

Today Facebook announced the new feature of being able to video chat with friends, as well as jump into a group chat with several friends. See their blog post about it here. In a move that is an obvious attempt to steal some thunder from Google+, the question is… does anyone care?

Now, take this with a grain of salt, and keep in mind my perspective as the author of Better Facebook: My primary focus is fixing the annoyances on Facebook and adding new features that they apparently don’t think are important. So of course I will look with a critical eye on any new “features” they announce. And obviously, I know that a lot of people will enjoy video chat. But is it really the big change that many Facebook users are begging for? Not even close.

If the Facebook platform were solid, robust, and full of features and options that everyone wants, then video chat would be a great new fluff feature! But instead, Facebook is filled with bugs, quirks, problems, inconsistencies, downtime, and errors. Not to mention all the features that thousands of users ask for regularly but Facebook never seems to find time to implement. Not even advanced things – I’m talking about basic things like filtering out stories you don’t want to see (Questions, friend notifications), or preventing chat messages from showing up in the Inbox! The list of requested features is long, and many of them are very reasonable.

Instead, Facebook seems to focus on flashy features that make them seem cool, or try to compete with alternatives like Google+. In my opinion, if Facebook would just focus on fixing its existing issues and building a solid, useable user interface that gives control to the users, they wouldn’t need to resort to cheap gimmicks and endless redesigns to keep peoples’ attention, or stop them from seeking out alternatives.

But… what do I know?