Facebook Messenger Lets 50 Friends Get In on a Call
Summary
The announcement likely will cause concern among telecommunications companies because "if you consider that social medias a form of asynchronous communication, then Facebook is the largest telecom on the planet, with about 1.3 billion subscribers," observed Michael Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. "Viber and Line are much smaller pools of people and dont have the rich social media capabilities that Facebook does." The calling feature is in software, so "if Facebook sees a need to expand the scope of the service, they could probably do it by flipping a switch," he noted. "This is just another indicator that trend is reaching critical mass, putting traditional telecom services increasingly on death watch." Wireless carriers wont be hit as hard, because data charges apply to calls made through Facebook and other apps, unless WiFi is used.