Facebook launches group calling on Messenger

The company has been growing out Messenger's capabilities, with integrations with Uber and Spotify

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I remember a few years back that Mark Zuckerberg was emphatic about there never being such a thing as a "Facebook phone." True to his word, that never happened. Instead, the company's strategy has involved taking over the phone from the inside, replacing all of the apps you use with its own family of apps.

More recently the strategy has shifted a bit to being all about Messenger, and letting users do everything they want to, from ordering an Uber to listening to music, without ever needing to leave.

Now that also includes group calling, David Marcus, Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook, revealed on Wednesday. 

"Really excited to announce the global roll out of group calling in Messenger today. From any group conversations, just tap on the phone icon to initiate a group call. You can then manage individual participants on the next screen," he wrote in a Facebook post.

There is no limit to the number of people who can be on a call, so if you feel like talking to hundreds of people at once, go ahead. Also, right now, the feature is only available for audio calls, though a video group chat feature is likely to be rolled out sometime in the future. 

The group all update will be rolling out in the next 24 hours, when users start to see the phone icon appear in group conversations.

Facebook first started letting its users make one-on-one calls via Messenger in early 2014. In the Q1 2015 earnings calls, just a year, later, Zuckerberg said that Messenger already accounted for more than 10% of mobile VoIP calls globally.

Around the same time, Facebook also launched one-on-one video calls from Messenger. 

Facebook has been putting a lot of focus on building out Messenger, ever since decoupling it from the main app in 2014, including opening it up to other apps and developers, as well as adding integrations for transportation apps, including Lyft and Uber, and music integration with Spotify.

It's worked well, as Messenger was the fastest growing app in the United States in 2015, growing by 31 percent through the first 10 months of the year to 96.4 million average unique users. In fact, that was the third time out of four years that Messenger held that distinction. In 2012 Messenger grew by a whopping 544 percent, and in 2014 it grew by 242 percent. The app his 900 million users in April.

Basically, if Facebook gets its way, Messenger is soon going to be the only app you'll ever need to open. 

(Image source: facebook.com)