Skype's Turn for a Bad Day?

While yesterday was a bad day for FaceTime, today might not be the best for Skype. Talkatone, a company that claims to provide “real-time communication freedom” by delivering free calls, text and real-time location sharing on a host of Apple AAPL iDevices, is now best friends with Facebook, TechCrunch reports. This announcement comes just one month after Microsoft's videoconferencing entity formally announced a partnership with the social networking giant. Why should Skype, the dominant player in low-cost communications, care? In short, Talkatone's free calls are just that – free. You don't need to pay for a bunch of credits to make calls. Instead, users must rely on their 3G or Wi-Fi connection. While this isn't likely to impact Skype too severely (not in the short-term, at least), Talkatone's concept is a fairly popular one. TechCrunch notes that without any press hyping its integration with Facebook, the service has already shot to #11 in Social Networking iPad apps. Follow me @LouisBedigian