You must Sign In to post a response.
  • Category: Club House Discussion

    Facebook Messenger Group video chat - How will it affect Skype?

    Facebook has launched group video chat option on its Messenger service. The recent update from Facebook indicated that you can add up to 50 participants to a video chat within the group. That would indeed be a great step going forward. However, we already have an able and most popular video calling application in the form of Skype. Will Facebook move affect it in any way?

    Though Facebook claims that you can add 50 participants to a chat, it would not be possible for all of them to have video calling at the same time. The exact video calling would be restricted to just six participants in a chat. What do our techians think about the move and how can it have an impact on the functioning and popularity of the competing video calling services.?
  • #24800
    Really this was a great move by the Facebook. Primarily Skype introduced video calling services for their users. In most organizations still they use Skype video call. It is because they use the Skype video calling service as secure and independent for them to have good conversation. It also gives them professionalism. In this scenario, Facebook have been already introduced video calling feature for their users. This update gives impact in the social media.

    Before the growth of Facebook video calling services, other social media applications started introducing their own video calling features for their users. Some of them like, Whatsapp, Hike, IMO, etc. They having planned to make an impact in the world by providing their users feel free on using video chatting. These impacts make Facebook to reflect on their own level. I feel this was the reason behind the Facebook to introduce group video chatting services. By introducing this group chat, users may give more attention towards their app. So keeping their users more active they turned up the media on their soft move.

    As you have said 50 participants can be added in this group video chat. But it is not possible to all the 50 participants to be actively chatting at a time. So restriction up-to 6 users are possible way to have smooth chat. Even the network should supports for all the users.

  • #24812
    After Orkut was shut down, I think every other social networking site is doing its best to survive and reign in the market. Not only Facebook, even Yahoo Messenger is having video calling feature enabled. I think all the social media are participating in a running race, and each is trying to keep the other behind with yet another novel feature. I think Skype too would try to stay afloat in the current scenario, so they are too likely to come up with some more attractive features.

    But each of these platforms has definitely got a speciality, which we all must have observed by now. Facebook is mainly for the purpose of finding new friends, while Skype is for connecting with the established contacts. So the focus of these two platforms make the users differ in their usage.

    From the user's angle, I have seen that users can be broadly divided into two types. One are those who keep trying the latest feature that has got enabled somewhere and there is this other lot, who prefer to stick to the ones, which they became familiar with.
    The people who got accustomed to Skype would most probably stick to their favourite site, even if others are providing better options as it is easy for them to do so. But yes, if Skype comes up with some new updates, they would happily accept them.

    Personally speaking, I have observed in my friend circle, that each of them has developed a fondness for their own social media, and they are quite stubborn if you ask them about changing their habits.

    Moreover, nowadays, as most of the children are staying away from their parents, the earlier generation got used to Skype and they have associated their interaction with their children through this app so much, that I doubt they would be that eager to change.

    To sum up, I think each of these platforms are successful enough in building up their own target users. So even if a few users of Skype shift to Facebook, the rest would stay with them, so Facebook might not be able to completely wash off the existence of Skype in that sense.


  • Sign In to post your comments