Facebook held a special media event on Wednesday to introduce "awesome" new Facebook features. It turns out the company unveiled improvements to Facebook Chat, including a new group chatting feature and, in partnership with Skype, the ability to make video calls. While the improvements are welcome—numerous other services such as AIM, iChat, Windows Live, and Yahoo have had similar features for some time—they are also far from the promised "awesome."

The staff in the Ars Orbiting HQ took the new features for a spin, and shortcomings were immediately obvious. While the service is based on Skype's technology, you can't make video calls with other Skype users. Video chats are only two-way, so no chatting among groups like in Google+'s new "hangout" feature. And text chat is stuck in the browser while video chats launch in a separate window that remains on top of all other windows, making it difficult to access other work while chatting.

However, Facebook's massive user base could make the new features useful, especially for those that don't heavily rely on other, more entrenched services like AIM or Skype. Here are some of the thoughts bandied about our in-orbit water cooler this afternoon.

Contributing writer Casey Johnston

Well, when Facebook said they were announcing something "awesome," I didn't expect them to use the definition of "awesome" circa 2005. Even the most important part of the announcement, video chatting, is a simple "me too" and lacks features that could have made it stand out, like mobile integration or group video chatting.

Given that Skype already has a few hundred million users, it seems like Facebook video chat is just licking the bowl to find the few remaining customers who might want to video chat with each other but haven't made it that far for whatever reason. Facebook will likely accomplish that (provided those users have idle webcams lying around, or are in the market for one), but to call this new feature "awesome" is just delusional.

Open Source editor Ryan Paul

Facebook's "awesome" product launch this morning was somewhat underwhelming. I rarely use Facebook's existing text chat capabilities and can't imagine ever using the new video chat service. A chat system that is tied entirely to a single website in a browser isn't particularly useful to me.

For one thing, I often miss Facebook chat messages when I'm flipping through other browser tabs. Integration with desktop chat clients such as Empathy and Trillian is really the only thing that makes Facebook's conventional chat service practical for me to use. As such, the idea of moving video chat off of the desktop and into the browser seems deeply unappealing. That said, the general awfulness of Skype's client user interfaces would arguably make almost anything else seem appealing—so maybe Facebook is onto something.

In general, video chat is a niche tool that I wouldn't use on a day-to-day basis anyway. The greatest virtue of text chat is that it fits well with multitasking. I can have several conversations at once and work on other things while waiting for responses. Video chat adds some expressive value to communication at a heavy cost in reduced productivity.

Although my beard inspires awe in all who view its splendor, my face is probably the last thing anybody burns to see on a regular basis. I don't dispute the mainstream appeal and technological impressiveness of video chat, but I don't want or need it myself.

Contributing writer Peter Bright

"Awesome"? No, not really. Ground-breakingly innovative? Not even close. Preempted by Google's video chat-enabled Plus release last week? More than a little. But is video a worthy addition to the Facebook platform? Absolutely.

Facebook is the way we keep in touch with our friends and families. Facebook Chat has been hugely popular since it was launched, and extending that to include video chatting is a total no-brainer. Video chatting is the most personal, intimate way of keeping in touch online, and bringing it to Facebook's 600 million active users—more than triple the number of active Skype users—makes perfect sense.

Facebook video chatting is simple but effective. Click the button to chat with someone, wait for him or her to accept the call, and you're done. The video and sound quality is reasonable, notably better than in Google Plus' video chatting. In a head-to-head feature comparison, Facebook's video calling might not seem all that hot—no YouTube sharing and no group calling, both of which are found on Google's system—but I suspect that the majority of users will never care (just as most users never pay to enable group video calling in regular Skype).

There are features I'd like to see added down the line—the ability to directly initiate a call with a Facebook contact from the Skype client, for example, and similar integration with Windows Live Messenger—but the core functionality is what's most important, and that works well. Success is all but guaranteed.