It’s been a busy few months for WhatsApp. In February, the app’s long-awaited dark mode arrived, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek video soundtracked by a rare recording of Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence. It was no small feat — creating a new look for an app used by 1.5 billion people took months of work, and the fanfare was justified — but developers soon had a much bigger challenge to overcome: the coronavirus crisis.
With physical contact banned across much of the world, developers have had to act quickly to meet the demands of millions of users relying on its services to stay connected. Features like animated stickers have seemingly taken a back seat, and video calls have come to the forefront.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic
We have seen a significant increase in the use of voice and video calls on WhatsApp,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechRadar.
“We’ve expanded voice and video calling to eight Oman WhatsApp Number List participants to help large families and groups of friends stay connected during these challenging times, knowing that their private calls are protected by end-to-end encryption.”
WhatsApp’s video chat service is getting a new boost very soon with the integration of Facebook’s all-new Messenger Rooms. As the name suggests, Rooms was first launched as part of Facebook Messenger, but the company is also integrating it into other apps and products, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Portal.
Rooms differ from WhatsApp video chats in a few ways
Allowing up to 50 people to join a conversation on a one-off basis. Rather than scheduling a meeting at a specific time, like you would in Zoom or Google Meet, you can simply open a room and friends can drop in if they’re nearby – more like a living room than a conference room or phone call.
Tiffany Dohzen, product manager for Messenger Rooms, spoke to TechRadar about her experience building the new app and what sets it apart from tools like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet. She explained that while Facebook had been exploring ways to expand further into video chat for some time, the coronavirus pandemic was what really sparked development.
Up to eight people can now join a standard WhatsApp video chat
“The idea of Rooms as a product came about once WhatsApp Number Database we realized the acceleration of the need for a product where you can spontaneously sign up and have hangouts really over the last few months,” she said.
“Some of the cool things, beyond video calls, are a lot of safety controls. We put a lot of value on not only making rooms fun, but really safe. The creator can lock the room, kick someone out if they misbehave, and if you’ve blocked someone on Facebook. They can’t join the room.
“We also added a lot of collaborative features
Cool effects on the mobile apps, and new features like lighting and backgrounds. The backgrounds are really cool. Some of them are animated, you can move them around.”
Links to Messenger Rooms have already been spotted Bulk Database in the beta versions of WhatsApp for iPhone and Android, and while we don’t yet know when it will be fully integrated. The teams are wasting no time.
As Dohzen explains, the Messenger Rooms team itself uses the tool to stay in touch on a daily basis. Which has allowed for faster development than would have been possible in “normal” times.
