MySpace, the social network, today announced a tie-up with Skype, the internet telephony service, that will create a potential 330 million-strong online community who will all be able to speak to each other for free.

The deal is the latest to increase pressure on traditional telecoms companies, who are battling to save margins in the face of virtually free internet calls.

This week, Microsoft also unveiled its latest foray into telecoms, an approach it has dubbed “unified communications”, which features at its centre the group's revamped Office Communications Server 2007 software.

Microsoft claims that the product, which allows workers in large companies to make voice calls from their desktop computers over the internet, can cut corporate communications bills by nearly a third.

The tool can also be used to manage e-mail, video calls, conferencing and instant messaging.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman and co-founder, said: “In the next decade, sweeping technology innovations driven by the power of software will transform communications.” He likened the shift to that from typewriters to PCs.

Meanwhile on the consumer side of the industry, MySpace’s 110 million users will be able to access the Skype telephony service through the instant messaging (IM) tools already embedded in MySpace profile pages.

The two groups, each fighting rivals on their own turfs, estimate that less than 6 per cent of their users overlap – mainly because Skype’s main strength is in Europe and Asia, while MySpace’s main market is the US.

Chris DeWolfe, the MySpace co-founder and chief executive, said: “Skype has ... an enormous international user base that we’re thrilled to connect with our existing community.”

Michael Van Swaaij, the interim Skype chief executive, said: "Strategically it's a very good match. We're both obviously like to get more users."

Skype, which is owned by eBay, the auction site, allows its 220 million current users to call each other for free through their computers, but charges a fee for extra services such as voice mail and calls to mobile phones.

Under the tie-up being announced today, MySpace, owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, will get a portion of those extra Skype fees levied on members of the social network. Other financial aspects of the deal were not disclosed.

MySpace denies that it is having problems generating revenue from its user base, with senior executives pointing out that Fox Interactive Media, the online division of News Corp, is on track to post revenues of more than $1 billion this year with the lion’s share coming from the social network.

But the site is under pressure to prove it can weather the explosive popularity of Facebook, the rival social network that has less than half as many global users but is growing at a far faster rate.

Facebook has already overtaken MySpace as the most popular social network in the UK, according to Netratings, which many feel signals an innate absence of brand loyalty among social network users.

It is already possible to make Skype calls through Facebook through software widgets – applications that sit on top of the Facebook platform – built by third-party programmers.

Last month, meanwhile, eBay warned shareholders that it would take an impairment charge of $900 million after buying Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005 in an effective admission that it had hugely overpaid for the service.

Ovum, the analysts, said: “Although revenues have been flowing from Skype, the growth has been slowing and the service is clearly not generating anything like the business boost that eBay had expected.”

In the second quarter of this year, Skype reported revenues of $90 million, up 103 per cent on the same quarter the year before. That rate of revenue growth was down from a 123 per cent rise in the first quarter of the year and a 164 per cent hike in the final quarter of 2006.

The new MySpace-Skype combination will face also competition in its own right.

Last year, Yahoo! and Microsoft made their instant messaging (IM) systems inter-compatible to create a communications platform with some 350 million user accounts.

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