Earlier today, Facebook introduced a new feature to their website which involved Video Chat powered by Skype. The new chat product, according to Facebook’s blog, will permit its users to call their friends right from Facebook. The refurbished chat system now consists of a sidebar with “the people you message most.” It automatically becomes visible when your browser is big enough.

So why is this a big deal? Facebook highlighted the information that users will not have to create new Skype accounts to make calls, and this will enable users to call their friends and family with a very nominal amount of setup (the flow for installing the applet only took a few seconds).

According to reports, this does not work yet on Opera browser and on Linux-based operating systems. It works perfectly fine with Google Chrome.

If you are someone who is not confident on how to make use of this feature, given below are some simple steps that you need to follow to enable video calling in your Facebook account.

Step 1: Head over to http://www.facebook.com/videocalling.

Step 2: Click on the “Get Started” button on this page.

Step 3: Now click on the name of the contact you want to chat with and then click on the Video calling icon in the chat window.

Step 4: You will be prompted to download a plug-in for your browser. This is only a one-time process, so you will be able to video chat in the future without having to install this plug-in again.

That’s it; you will now be able to video call and group chat with your friends using Facebook. Video calling however is only restricted to one person at this time. However, the quality of the call is terrific.

This news comes just a week after when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced at the Boston headquarters last week that his company is planning to “launch something awesome” for its users.

Facebook’s video chat doesn’t support group chats yet, but when asked if Facebook will be rolling out group video calling, Zuckerberg said not to rule anything out. He added that one-to-one calling makes up the enormous majority of video calling.

Additionally, the company has also revamped its chat tool – making a bigger sidebar for people to see who is online with more ease.