Facebook debuts in the video conferencing market with Messenger Rooms

Video Chats are in great demand as the Coronavirus pandemic restricts people to their homes and pushes businesses into relying on work from home arrangements. To capitalize on the opportunity, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) launched its new videoconferencing tool on Friday as an expansion of its live-streaming features.

In its statement on Friday, Facebook said that the new videoconferencing tool that the company is calling Messenger Rooms will allow as many as 50 participants to engage in a video call at a time. Facebook will be using a similar tiled layout as its competitor Zoom that will display up to 16 participant videos on desktop and half of it on a smaller smart device.

Messenger Rooms Will Not Have Time Limits On Calls

The world’s largest social network distinguished its service by enabling users to share links with people who are not currently on Facebook or don’t have the application downloaded on their device. The link will allow the non-users to use a web browser to participate in the Messenger Room without creating an account first or having to download the Facebook application.

The company further added on Friday that it doesn’t intend to impose a time limit on its newly launched video conferencing tool.

Originally, Facebook was scheduled to release its tool in the 3^rd or 4^th quarter of 2020. In light of the unprecedently high demand attributed to COVID-19, however, the company decided to accelerate the release. As per the Head of Messenger at Facebook, Stan Chudnovsky:

“Our video calls doubled, and when we’re looking at group calls usage, that went up even higher. So, we figured out a way to build those things faster.”

Facebook also highlighted on Friday that there were currently over 700 million accounts on Messenger and WhatsApp that were using calls feature every day.

Federal Court Approves Facebook’s Settlement With U.S FTC

In separate news, Facebook also received official approval from a federal court for its £4 billion settlement with the U.S FTC (Federal Trade Commission) for its privacy mishaps involving the British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook surged roughly 1% in after-hours trading on Friday. The social network closed last week at £155 per share in the stock market that translates to around a 20% decline in 2020 so far. In contrast, the stock posted an annual gain of around 50% in 2019.

At the time of writing, Facebook is valued at £438.21 billion and has a price to earnings ratio of 29.57.