Messenger Rooms, Facebook’s new video conferencing service, is coming to WhatsApp. The company takes another step towards unifying its messaging services.
WhatsApp users will be able to create video conferences and invite Facebook and Instagram users to participate.
Last month, Facebook launched the Messenger Rooms platform, a competitor to Zoom and HouseParty for videoconferencing at a time when the use of this type of service is growing rapidly in the context of Coronavirus.
The particularity of this new service is that it will create a bridge between all Facebook messaging applications.
Users of Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram or Potal will be able to participate in the same virtual conferences.
Facebook has been working on a unified messaging project between its different services for several months now. Messenger Rooms is the first manifestation of this desire.
The integration of this feature into WhatsApp was initially spotted in the beta version of the application on Android.
However, a new report from WaBetaInfo indicates that Messenger Rooms is currently being tested in WhatsApp Web.
In the latest version 2.2019.6, WhatsApp Web provides a button to create chat rooms or initiate a video conference.
The application then asks the user if they want to create a room from WhatsApp or go to Facebook Messenger to initiate it.
People who wish to host a video conference will be able to do so from either application and then invite participants to join the conference via a link.
Participants in these calls do not need to have a Facebook account. Conferencing can accommodate up to 50 people.
While this number is less than Zoom’s 100 participants, it is sufficient to meet the needs of users in the vast majority of cases.
The WatBetaInfo report does not mention when Messenger Rooms support will be available for all WhatsApp users.
But its deployment may take some time as Facebook is still working on making the service available worldwide.
