Facebook today announced that its Messenger app is now capable of performing group video calls. Only six participants can see one another, but as many as 50 people can still add voice to the chat and interact with emojis and GIFs. That makes Messenger’s video chat feature one of the lesser robust options in the industry, seeing as how Google Hangouts has a 25-person limit on video and Microsoft Skype has a 10-person limit. The addition of video chat follows an April update that first added group calling to Messenger. Prior to that add-on, Facebook’s app was only capable of making one-on-one audio calls.
The company is clearly interested in capturing both consumers and, with the recent launch of its Work software, office employees who do a fair amount of telecommuting and video conferencing. To that end, workplace chat app Slack beat Facebook to the punch, adding video chat just last week. In the mobile space, Facebook is dealing with a whole other breed of competitor. Snapchat added video calling earlier this year, while WhatsApp just made the feature available widely to the public last month.
Facebook says the update is rolling out today globally for both iOS and Android. While video chatting, the company stresses that Messenger’s other functions remain intact. So you can still send texts, stickers, and other animations while video and audio are transmitting. There is also one notable iOS-only feature: live masks. Similar to Snapchat filters that animate a visual overlay over your face in real time, Facebook’s live masks will go one step further and augment the live video chat with whatever goofy animation you’d like to place on the screen. The company says the feature should be arriving on Android soon.
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