Skype 5 goes gold; brings Facebook integration and group video calls

According to Skype's very own blog, the long awaited Skype 5 has officially been released to the masses. Aimed at making you even more social, Skype 5 (Windows only, for now) brings a nice set of new feautres. Among them is the Facebook tab. Here's what the new Facebook integration brings to the table.

With Facebook integration, you can:

• see your Facebook News Feed in Skype
• post status updates that can be synced with your Skype mood message
• comment and like friends’ updates and wall posts
• call and SMS your Facebook friends on their mobile phones and landlines
• make a free Skype-to-Skype call if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact

Skype 5 will also give you the ability to have group video calls. For now, Skype says this features is still in beta and will be free. However, as mentioned in the past, Skype fully intends to charge for the function down the road. In order to take full advantage of this feature, all users participating must be running Skype 5 or Skype 5 beta. For those on a Mac, Skype 5 beta is still the only option. Within group video calls, Skype has added "dynamic group video calling," which moves the person that's currently speaking into focus. This aims to make following a large conversation easier.

Other features include improved call quality, automatic call recovery, an improved call quality manager, which helps improve your overall call experience, and Skype Home, which acts as a dashboard for your overall Skype experience.

To download Skype 5 for Windows, visit Skype's website.