Lately, the news has been full of updates and expansions to the Facebook Messenger app, and Facebook shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The latest addition is free group calling, a long-awaited feature that will put Messenger on par with other calling services like Skype.
The development was announced by David Marcus, Facebook’s head of Messenger. He stated that group calling is being rolled out globally (on both iOS and Android) within 24 hours, so it should be available now to everyone who has the latest version of Messenger installed.
Group calling is easy to use. Within any messenger thread, you can find a phone icon in the top upper right-hand corner.
You’ll then be able to select who from that thread you want to include in the call. If a friend calls you but you miss the call, you can join in later as long as the call is still in progress. From within the group chat screen, tapping the phone icon will bring you into the call.
Messenger will also display who’s included in the call at all times, and you can invite anyone from the Messenger thread to join.
Group calls can range from 2 to 50 people, so you’d have to have a big group of friends in order to get cut off by the limit.
Our conclusion:
For now, Messenger is only offering voice calls. Still, the feature is free, making it somewhat competitive with Skype, Google Hangouts, and Slack. We can only imagine that group video calling will be a development in the near future. Then Skype had better watch out.
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Written by content manager Meghan Woolley
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