“But when the pandemic started, obviously that mission of ours became only that much more important.” And that was something we were working on even before the pandemic started,” Chudnovsky said in an interview. “Messenger’s goal was always to be the place where people can hang out with people who they love or who are close to them but who are not physically next to them. Stay safe using Zoom: These 5 safety tips can keep the 'Zoombombing' hackers awayĪccording to Facebook, video and voice calls more than doubled last month on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and the April 6 holiday week was the biggest ever for group video calls on Messenger. Zoom alternatives: What about Hangouts, Skype and Teams? The group video chat feature was already in the works before the coronavirus, but Facebook speeded up development as the volume of video calls and group video calls on its apps skyrocketed, Stan Chudnovsky, vice president of Messenger, told USA TODAY. "It's an incredibly important way people are relying on to stay connected right now," he said. "The ability to feel like you are directly connected with someone live over video" is essential to maintaining that togetherness, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Friday during a broadcast on Facebook Live. Rooms can be created from Messenger or Facebook and you can invite anyone to join, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. Eventually Rooms will be available on Instagram, WhatsApp and the Facebook Portal smart speaker, too.įacebook and its family of apps have become an even more crucial communications lifeline for hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home desperate to stay in touch with relatives and friends even as the pandemic keeps them apart. On Friday it's rolling out a new video chat product called Messenger Rooms so you can hang out with up to 50 people at a time with no time limit. Now Facebook wants to kick the video-conferencing interloper off its turf. Watch Video: Facebook: Social media platform rolls out new group video chatįrom virtual cocktail hours to online classrooms, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned Zoom into everyone’s go-to social network.
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