Monday, April 27, Facebook has launched a free VOIP video calling service, boasting high hopes to reach out to its 1.44 million users on the social network and its already 600 million Messenger user base.
The service was launched in the United States, the UK, Canada, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal and Uruguay, with other countries soon to benefit.
Messenger video calling will function over cellular and wifi connections, both on iOS and Android. The purpose of the service is to offer users quality face to face time. And since it is connected to Messenger it has been suggested that it will be exactly what the users need: a built in service that can offer sponataneity and closer relations.
Everything starts with a text and the transfer to video call can easily be made just by one tap. Did we really need yet another built-in VOIP service? It seems so as the competitors – Microsoft Corp’s Skype, Apple Inc. FaceTime and Google Inc. Hangouts – have a narrower satisfied user base.
Facebook aims at connecting people regardless of the the mobile connection they have. Mark Zuckerberg looks upon the new service as a further development, stating that 10 percent of the global mobile Messenger VOIP calls already account for how useful the new service is. He believes that not far from now VOIP calls will undermine phone calling and the benefit of video calling is even higher. In order to reach this goal, Messenger promises to adjust the call quality to the connection we each have at our disposal. If video doesn’t work, switching to audio is simple and the usual feature that announces the users whether their connection is weakening is also available. Facebook offers this service for free, so that we only have to worry about the data use charged my our mobile operators.
Image Source: androidplanets.com/
Joe Hennessey
