Today WhatsApp Inc. made WhatsApp complete. WhatsApp Messenger offers texting, voice calling and now video calling is being added. Going head-to-head with the longstanding king – Skype, Google’s Duo, and Apple’s popular FaceTime.
WhatsApp is rolling out the video calling feature today, according to The Verge. Though I haven’t received the update yet, maybe in a few hours… it will be pushed to its billion plus users (including me).
Video calling has been a long time coming. WhatsApp was released way back in 2009 with just texting, two years later, group chats were added, and voice calling feature was added four years post that.
Finally, after seven years of WhatsApp texting and not very much used voice calling, video calling makes the app an all rounder. Facebook deserves some credit, only after the deal did WhatsApp start adding features now and then.
2016, has been a pretty awesome year for Whatsapp Inc. – the company added end-to-end encryption to its app, released a PC (personal computer) client, and added Snapchat styled features recently (very recently). Also the add received few touch-ups, the emojis are now bigger and minor tweaks like – new forward icon, etc.
Also this year, WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook announced that it will start using WhatsApp data to make money.
WhatsApp has a huge user base. There’s no denying of that fact. But there are few already very popular and sticky apps – FaceTime is the way to go for Apple users, it not only works on the iPhone but also on the iPad and the Mac. Many people switch to Apple ecosystem just for FaceTime and other services like iMessages (mainly for iMessages).
On Windows PCs and Android, generally Skype or Hangouts is used, and the recently released Duo just for Android and iOS.
WhatsApp video calling can make things a lot better but the chances of beating Apple’s FaceTime at its game is bleak.