Facebook Messenger Voice Call Trial Expands To US
Facebook extends voice call trial to the US after successful testing in Canada
Facebook is to expand its trial of voice calling within the Facebook Messenger smartphone application to the US, the company has confirmed.
The social network had been testing the service in Canada, but due to the success of the trial and the desire to expand its audience, US users can now also make calls for free to their Facebook friends over an Internet connection. There is however, no indication as to when the feature will be available to UK users.
Facebook Messenger voice calls
Facebook confirmed to TechWeekEurope that it was testing the ability to call other Messenger users for free via the Messenger app and that “Facebook is constantly testing new features and designs.” To make calls, users simply have to open the Facebook Messenger application, start a conversation and tap on an ‘I’ and select ‘free call’.
Skype functionality has been integrated into the web version of Facebook since last year, but is currently absent from the company’s smartphone offerings. Facebook Messenger, which launched in August 2011, will now go head to head with other VoIP services such as Viber, while RIM has has also decided to include voice calling over Wi-Fi in the latest version of BlackBerry Messenger.
Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled Graph Search, a new social search engine that allows users to search through content shared by friends or made publicly available by other Facebook users. The beta version of the service will be rolled out to a number of users from today and will focus on four specific areas of content – people, photos, places and interests.
