Facebook allows audio group conversations in Messenger

Facebook makes it possible to have group conversations with calling in Messenger. Up to fifty people can set up a connection at the same time. Group conversations with video are not yet possible.

Facebook CEO David Marcus announced the position in a post on the social network. The function works from the group conversations in Messenger, where a click on the bell icon immediately creates a group conversation via audio. The next screen shows who has and who has not.

The feature will be available worldwide and should be available to everyone on Thursday. It seems only possible to set up group conversations with audio from a chat. Calling several people at the same time with whom you are not in a group conversation, or calling only several people in a group conversation does not seem possible.

There is also no function for video calling in groups. It is unknown if Facebook is working on that feature. Messenger is Facebook’s second most popular chat app in the Benelux, after WhatsApp. Facebook bought WhatsApp a few years ago. While WhatsApp has more than a billion users worldwide, Messenger is around 900 million.

It recently became clear that the detour to chat on smartphones without the Messenger app will soon be a thing of the past. Facebook has so far left the chat feature intact on the mobile site, allowing people who access Facebook on their smartphones to continue chatting via the browser or a wrapper app like Simply Facebook or Metal without installing Messenger. With the disappearance of the chat function on the mobile site, those users will have to install the app to continue chatting via the smartphone.