In what will undoubtedly encourage more face-to-face communication in this age of tweets and status updates, Twelephone allows you to make video calls via Twitter to other Tweople. And guess what? It’s for non-tweeps too.

So if you’re used to working from home in your sweatpants, here’s yet another skype-like intrusion to fear.

“The first and only web telephone that integrates with Twitter” has arrived, ladies and gentlemen – and it’s free for your enjoyment.

What is it? Gizmodo compared Twelephone to Google Voice, with Twelephone “nestled snugly within the confines of your browser.”

Through WebRTC, which uses JavaScript APIs too allow in-browser real-time communication, the new service captures the microphone and camera from a user’s computer directly and without using Flash. And all this is coming to you over a secure, encrypted connection.

So you get a Twelephone number by signing in and connecting to Twitter. Your twelephone number (link) will be:

http://twelephone.com/[insert your Twitter handle]

And then if you’re using Chrome (and you need to be for this. You should be anyway, what else would you be using? Explorer?!), get the Chrome extension to Twelephone. Here’s why:

1. It maintains your user presence with the twelephone servers (online, offline, away, and do-not-disturb)
2. It notifies you of other twelephone users’ status changes via HTML5 Notifications
3. Most importantly, it controls the ringer popup for incoming calls. The incoming call notification window shows the avatar and twitter name of the calling party (if available) and includes Accept and Reject buttons allowing you to answer or decline an incoming call.
4. It also maintains in-call status so that you do not get interrupted by another incoming call while you are already in a call.
5. It also provides a reminder link to your twelephone number that can be copy and pasted into tweets, emails, blogs, etc. as well as a link to return to your twelephone user page.

Just make sure you turn off the “display notifications” option or you’ll get nonstop popups when anyone comes online in the Twelephone network.

And if you add the “Call Me widget” to your website, folks using Chrome can call you with one click:

Not a Chrome user? Don’t worry – you’ll be able to make twelephone calls some time soon. “As other browsers support WebRTC peer-connections, more browser extensions will be added to our inventory allowing twelephone to run ubiquitously across browsers thus growing the twelephone network.”

Want to see it in action? Here you go!

(Telephone image from Shutterstock)