Facebook Now Has a Reusable Gift Card

Facebook is inching even further into retail space with the introduction of a new gift card that can handle multiple balances. Starting Thursday, Facebook users can log on and purchase this Discovered-powered card, which is then physically delivered to the recipient. However, for now, it only supports four businesses: Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, Sephora, and Target.

To purchase one of these cards, users must direct themselves to the Facebook Gifts page. The new cards are found under the obvious Gift Cards & Digital category, but as of this writing were not present. Facebook indicated that Target, Olive Garden and the other two will be individually listed among Starbucks, iTunes, Hulu Plus and other current offerings.

Once the actual retailer is chosen, the sender determines the amount to be placed on the card. "Your friend will be notified instantly about your gift, and will receive a Facebook Card in the mail a few days later. As soon as it arrives, your friend can use the card at the retailer you've chosen for the amount you’ve gifted," Facebook said...

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Facebook to Launch Video Chat Effort with Skype?

Forget poke wars, how about bugging friends in different time zones by calling them at all hours of the night?

Facebook is already the king of social networks and with a newly improved messaging system and an integrated IM service, the site aims to cover all methods of communication. However, it is missing one service that rivals like Gmail already have, and that is video chatting. Still, it looks like Facebook won't be trailing behind Gmail in that regard for much longer.

A few weeks back, Skype 5.0 for Windows was released and it revealed some very interesting Facebook integration. The new feature allowed Skype users to SMS, chat or call their Facebook friends via the VOIP service right from the Facebook News Feed.  Now the latest rumors say the partnership between Facebook and Skype could widen to include video calling.

App developer Tal Ater writes that while developing a Facebook application called Green Any Site, he came across something in the site's code that as recently as a few days ago wasn't there. Further investigation revealed that the code checks for plug-in support using either ActiveX on IE or the Skype SDK. Ater says he believes Facebook is bucket testing the feature as the code doesn't appear every time he loads a page.

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