Some think it could be a platform designed to rival Apple’s App Store, while a recent report in The New York Times said that Facebook was preparing an app for the iPad. Others have cited the recently leaked Facebook photo sharing app for the iPhone, or maybe an integration with Netflix.

 

The front-running rumor, however, is that Facebook, in partnership with Skype, is about to usher in a new video chat feature. Communication via Facebook is currently limited to instant message text, but predictions suggest that Skype owner, Microsoft, has agreed to integrate video chat into the site. Some weight has been lent to this by the appearance of invitations for the launch which show the image of a face inside a speech bubble.

 

Such a link-up could significantly increase the use of Skype. Currently it has 170 million active users compared to the 750 million accounts run by Facebook. Skype, of course, was bought by Microsoft – a Facebook shareholder - last May for $8.5 billion.

 

Zuckerberg’s announcement to reporters was light on detail, but he did reveal that the project had been carried out at the Seattle office rather than at Facebook’s California headquarters, Palo Alto. The Seattle office has been largely responsible for the company’s mobile developments, and the unveiling last March of Facebook’s unified mobile site.

 

As the world’s largest Internet social networking service, Facebook is constantly challenging other big online companies such as Google and Yahoo for users’ online time and related advertising income. Facebook has asserted that its account holders who use the service on mobile devices are twice as active on the service as PC users.  Zuckerberg sums it up by his almost succinct observation that mobile use “means that instead of being just on a computer when you’re at a computer, you’re at a computer all the time.”