As most of the users over the web are aware of release of Google+ from Google as a new social networking tool combining various aspects to social networking like Sharing, Photo sharing, Video chat (Hangout) and much more into a single product. Facebook looks a bit worried as it was evident when Facebook blocked a Contact export tool which was used by people to import their Facebook contacts to Google+. Today, Facebook has released a tool in collaboration with Skype which enables Facebook video chat within your browser.

To enable and setup Facebook Video calling, Visit the Facebook Video Page. You need to click on Get started button of the webpage.

After you click his, it will show you the steps setup video chat on your browser. You need to install a plugin which is almost 480 KB in size. After you run this file, it does download something else from the web and works like a web installer.

After all is done, you can see a Video tab in your chatbox window of every chat you want to start with. Just click on that button and it will start.

After installing the plugin, I tried to have a video chat with one of my friends. It asked to install the same plugin at other end and after that we did tried to chat. But everything was not as smooth as it should have been. Even though the plugin was installed at both ends, it said,video chat need to be set up. The problem was solved only when both the browsers were restarted.

After the call was connected, the video and mics were started on their own. Here also, Facebook was not able to detect the video feed from other side. Again, we tried and this time it worked. The video quality was almost same as in  Skype, but the Audio was too bad. The audio was coming intermittently while if we use a skype alone, the audio feed is excellent.

For me, the experience was not good after testing Google+ Hangout. Facebook needs to do a lot of things much better if it needs to stay on top of social networking world.