MySpace and Skype team up for voice function on IM client

MySpace and Skype are prepared to announce that the eBay-owned telephony client will be providing voice chat services for the News Corp. owned social network's instant messaging client, MySpaceIM. They are yet to divulge the financial terms involved in the new partnership.

In all probability, this must be the "MySpace announcement" rumored to take place on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Initially it was believed that this announcement would reveal a developer platform for MySpace similar to the one for Facebook. But thanks to reliable informants who were able to quickly hint to multiple news outlets, including CNET News.com that this would not be the case. An informant for gossip blog Valleywag also revealed that the announcement would deal with the MySpaceIM client.

With this new partnership, all users in MySpace can now link their profiles to a Skype account. They can also place voice chat calls through the MySpaceIM client or the Skype client to both MySpace and Skype members. But once your Myspace profile is set to "private," you can't receive calls from people that are not on your friends list. You will find this service only in the 20 countries where MySpace has "localized communities."

In a joint statement the two companies stressed on the sheer number of users this will cover. "With more than 110 million monthly active MySpace users and 220 million Skype registered users around the world, this partnership connects two of the most popular communications platforms on the Internet to create the world's largest online, voice-connected community."

At the moment, only 25 million out of the 110 million active users of MySpace have downloaded the MySpaceIM client and none of the two companies is at the top of its game. When it comes to the social-networking field in membership and traffic, MySpace is still leading. The only thing is that it has lost its position in the spotlight to another rival, the fast-growing Facebook. Talk about Skype, it has not exactly been a real winner for eBay. Some critics actually said that the two are quite incompatible.