OK. Here I am in Skype for Windows and I want to send my sister a message in Facebook, because she does not have Skype. So I'm thinking that since Skype now has a Facebook "interface" that I can do this. NOT SO, unless perhaps at the time I'm looking at the Facebook newsfeed I happen to see a posting from her drifting past my view. Alas, there is not.

But wait, Skype tells me not to worry. I can click on somebody else in my newsfeed which will bring up the regular Facebook search box. Then I can search for her and send her a chat message just as if I were in the real Facebook . So that's what I do, and sure enough I'm soon chatting with Sis.

But wait, this is no longer a Skype window. I've been transported to my browser because Skype's Facebook "integration" was unable to handle it. So I ask myself, why did I not just go to my browser to begin with rather than going first to Skype which is clearly not able to handle the breadth of the Facebook experience. 

The fact is that the valuable part of Skype's Facebook interface is not Skype at all, but rather a browser. Skype's one Facebook trick, the newsfeed, is not integration. It's just a stupid one trick pony, and if you want the real Facebook interface, that's just too bad. Without a browser running alongside Skype, you can't search for a person or a topic. You can't go to somebody's Wall. You can't go to a Facebook page. You can't click over to a related thread.

What's the point? If I have to be running a browser at the same time, why bother? I'd rather run a Browser from the outset and get a real Facebook UI rather than a cheap imitation.

It's not that the Facebook feed inside Skype is worth nothing. It's clearly something that some people might like. But Skype for Windows has implemented it as the default, and that is totally inappropriate. At best, it should be an add-on or plugin.

If this Facebook newsfeed monstrosity is brought to Skype for Mac, which I'm sure will be, it will constitute an unwelcome and unnecessary annoyance to an already annoying UI in version 5.x. It's sad when there is so much else that could be done in Skype's Mac UI. Many of the things that are obvious to Mac users will never happen, simply because the developers have been told to follow the Windows interface.