Just a few days after Slack began putting pressure on Skype with its group video-calling feature, Facebook is joining the battle to dethrone Skype as the default video conferencing queen. Back in April, Facebook launched group voice calls on its Messenger app for mobile, and now the full version is ready for your desktop.
This weekend, the social media giant confirmed to TechCrunch that Facebook is indeed in the process of rolling out a “small test” for its desktop version of group voice calls. If you’re one of the lucky chosen, you’ll see a phone icon in your group chat, which you can click on in order to invite your chat friends to a call. Slowly but surely, Facebook is attempting to commandeer every single one of your communication methods.
Unsurprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg’s ubiquitous social network isn’t the only app that is also incorporating voice and video into its functionality. As we mentioned earlier, Slack has also rolled out its own version of video calling, and popular apps like WeChat and WhatsApp offer similar functionality.
On Saturday, Facebook-owned Oculus also launched a voice calling feature called Parties, which allows for VR-to-VR calls.
The social media platform has been in the audio calling game for quite some time now, first introducing the feature on desktop three years ago. But now, rather than only facilitating one-on-one conversations, it’s trying to make conversations even more social, with group functionality becoming more popular than ever.
And now that group voice calls have begun to make their appearance on the full desktop version of Messenger, it could be just a matter of time before group video chats join as well. So look out, Skype — your days at the top of the heap may be numbered.
