• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 6, 2011

Facebook Wednesday announced a partnership with Skype to integrate video calling into the social networking site, adding a long rumored feature and enhancing its role as an online communications powerhouse. Facebook also rolled out a new group chat feature and a redesigned interface for its chat service.

In introducing the new offerings at a press conference today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed Facebook had hit 750 million users and spoke of a shift in social networking from getting people connected to building apps that help people share more types of content. He said Facebook users are now sharing material at twice the rate of a year ago and that 4 billion pieces of content are shared on the site each day.

That activity is driven in part through Facebook's Groups feature, which more than half of it users participate in a year after its launch. There was speculation that Facebook might unveil an iPad app or mobile photo-sharing service today, but there was no mention of either of those rumored initiatives at the press conference. Read more in this blog post.