Group Video Chat comes to Messenger

You can now join your friends for a Live Video chat on Facebook Messenger as the instant messaging app unveils Group Video Chat for mobile users.

Sporting masks and filters, six users can now video chat with each other while simultaneously appearing on the screen, while up to fifty people can join in via audio and send text, emojis,GIFs and stickers.

One-on-one just isn’t enough anymore as this is not the first very recent update from a social media platform involving groups. Snapchat, the ephemeral photo sharing platform too rolled out a feature that lets friends share images, video and text by creating a group, but also applied their exclusive 24 hour and one time view ability.

Snapchat does not offer simultaneous video chat with multiple people or Live video capabilities, but Messenger has done better and been quicker than any other popular instant messaging apps to offer group video chat except WeChat.

While the six users can fit into the screen and be visible to others, up to 50, they can join the conversation through emojis, text, GIFs and also listen and speak to the others.

Media Source: TechCrunch

The face filters and masks will be powered by MSQRD, the company acquired by Facebook earlier this year to step up their challenge to Snapchat’s dominion in the younger demographic. Since then, Facebook ended up cloning and incorporating Stories into Instagram, but that has been said more than a hundred times.

The feature will be launched today for iOS and Android users, and Web, but there is bad news for Web users who were looking forward to using the MSQRD filters and masks, as it expected that the features will not be rolled out to Web users.