“Group video calling is definitely a use case that a lot of our people might be interested in at some point,” Chudnovsky told Techcrunch.

The call uses your phone’s front camera by default, but you can also switch it to the back camera if you want to show off your surroundings or the sandwich you are eating.Īt the moment, Messenger only allows one on one video calls, but Facebook may add conference calling later on. You simply navigate to the friend you want to call and tap the camera icon at the top of the screen. Using video chat through Messenger is simple.

Facebook stated that it plans on rolling out video chat capabilities to other regions at a later date. The new video chat capabilities are currently limited to Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the U.K., the U.S. “It’s fast, reliable and high quality. Video calling in Messenger is available for calls made from a mobile phone to another mobile phone, even if one person is on iOS and the other person is on an Android device.”

“Video calling will expand Messenger’s real-time communication features, enabling the more than 600 million people who use Messenger every month to reach others wherever they are, from anywhere,” Head of Product for Messenger Stan Chudnovsky and Engineering Manager Param Reddy wrote in an announcement. Now, the app’s new video chat features will allow it to compete with similar apps like Skype or FaceTime. In a move that pretty much everyone expected, Facebook Inc has announced that its standalone Messenger app will now support free video chat.įacebook originally turned a lot of people off of Messenger when it forced users to install a separate app if they wanted to continue chatting with their friends through Facebook, but the social network has continued adding new features to make it up to them, including the ability transfer money through Messenger.

Is skype free video calls