COVID-19 Effects: Video Calling Apps Get New Features

As many enterprises and companies are supporting the remote working concept to maintain social distancing and curb the spread of COVID-19, the demand for video conferencing has skyrocketed unlike ever before, the video conferencing and collaboration tools such as Zoom, Google Duo, etc. hitting the tech headlines every now and then.

And, to cash in on this growing demand for video conferencing and collaboration, the instant messaging and other platforms in the industry are coming up with interesting features as detailed here.

 

WhatsApp Supports Up To 8 Group Participants

Until recently, WhatsApp was supporting up to four participants in group voice and video calls. And, during the lockdown period due to COVID-19, the instant messaging platform has rolled out support for group calling of up to eight participants on both the Android and iOS versions of the app. While increasing the number of participants for group calls from four to eight, the instant messaging platform has not compromised on the end-to-end encryption.

Google Meet Made Free

As remote work has become increasingly popular, Google Meet was made free for users until September this year. Also, the company came up with a slew of features aimed at improving the meeting quality and overall user experience. Well, the platform brought in useful features such as tiled layout for group calls with up to 16 participants, the ability to share high-quality video with audio during meetings, low-light mode to make the participants more visible, and noise cancellation as well.

Google Duo Web Supports Group Calls

As remote work has become increasingly popular, Google Meet was made free for users until September this year. Also, the company came up with a slew of features aimed at improving the meeting quality and overall user experience. Well, the platform brought in useful features such as tiled layout for group calls with up to 16 participants, the ability to share high-quality video with audio during meetings, low-light mode to make the participants more visible, and noise cancellation as well.

Facebook Messenger Room Gets Popular

Facebook Messenger has come up with a dedicated messaging service with support for video calling. Called Facebook Messenger Rooms, this feature supports up to 50 participants simultaneously during a video call. What's interesting is that participants need not have a Facebook ID to use the service, thereby encouraging non-Facebook account holders to take part in meetings.

Zoom Introduces Security Features

At the beginning of the lockdown, Zoom almost became a household name as millions of people started using the service. The major highlight of Zoom meetings is the number of users it supports. But privacy issues came crashing in and this made the service bring more privacy-centric features for its users. Recently, the Zoom 5.0 update was rolled out to make it appealing for users.