Facebook seems to be giving its messaging service Messenger a lot of power lately. After introducing a whole bunch of great features these past weeks, they now bring what may be the most useful yet: the ability to make free video calls through the app itself. The social media giant wants to keep it at par with a lot of messaging services in the market, particularly its erstwhile rival, Apple, whose Hangouts is one of the most widely used free video call services (known as FaceTime).
Using the video call is pretty easy on the Messenger. You can start making one from any conversation you’re having and all you need to do is tap that video camera icon (obviously) on the top right corner of the screen. It is also platform agnostic, so if you’re on an Android device and the person you want to video call with is on iOS, that is not a problem, as long as that person is also on a mobile device, like you are. No word yet if this will also eventually extend to tablets and desktops.
Messenger users already have the ability to make free voice calls through the app, but sometimes, voice calls and even typing messages isn’t enough. Adding this video call feature will further expand Messenger’s features and market, and will probably add more numbers to its already huge current base of 600 million users. The past weeks saw features like sending money to friends, Messenger Platform, and Businesses on Messenger, introduced to users, and probably attract more Facebook users back to the Messenger fold, after initial complaints about turning it into a stand-alone app.
The video calling feature is only available in several countries for now (Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the UK, the US and Uruguay). But of course, you can expect it to roll out to other regions and countries in the next few months.
SOURCE: Facebook
