Skype confirmed early Thursday morning that some users may experience connection issues signing into the service or making Skype calls. The company says it has identified the problem and has posted instructions for fixing the issue. The good news is it doesn’t look like the outage will be as massive as the one last December, which was later blamed on an overloaded cluster of support servers. If you’re experiencing issues now, hit the jump for some quick fix instructions from Skype. Just don’...

Facebook and Google are in separate talks to enter joint ventures with Skype, Reuters reported on Thursday. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also reportedly been in clandestine meetings discussing an all-out purchase of the VoIP service. Skype’s IPO, which is expected to occur later this year, could be worth $1 billion, however, deals with Facebook or Google could bring in as much as $3-$4 billion, Reuters said. Skype 5.0 launched in October of this year and added tight Facebook integration, but...

Viber, the popular iPhone application that allows for free calling to other Viber users, has been updated to version 2.0.1. After applying the update, Viber users will be able to send and receive free text messages to one another, complete with notifications. Viber has also been updated with a number of UI changes — the favorites have been moved, the calling mechanism has been improved and now shows the current state of any Viber call, and the application now has a deactivation feature. The update is availa...

Research In Motion has just announced that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Social Platform is now available in public beta. First announced during BlackBerry DEVCON 2010, BBM Social Platform allows developers to integrate their applications directly with BBM using a set of new APIs, and RIM is banking on developers to make BBM a more robust application. RIM hopes programmers will create multimedia apps, location-based services, games, VoIP services, and more, that can build on the existing BBM experience. HereR...