Whatsapp rolls out 8-person video conferencing support

Unsurprisingly, the video conferencing market has heated up dramatically as demand has abruptly skyrocketed. Zoom quickly emerged as the darling of businesses and schools everywhere only to reveal serious security flaws (that are hopefully patched up now), while Skype and FaceTime have retained their popularity as major players. We’ve also seen efforts from Google, Telegram, and now WhatsApp.

The last beta for WhatsApp had previously revealed that video calls with more participants was incoming, but as Android Central reported, the latest version 2.20.50 brings video rooms for up to eight participants to the stable main channel.

WhatsApp is the world’s most popular chatting service, with over 300 million active users. Thus, further expansion into the video conferencing field is likely to be met with much anticipation, especially since it also boasts end-to-end encryption, providing better security for important calls.

As part of the Facebook portfolio, WhatsApp is also expected to receive integration into Messenger Rooms in the near future as well. The app’s video conferencing will need a strong feature set to compete with native options like FaceTime or Duo, but so far, WhatsApp seems like a strong contender for cross-platform video calls on smartphone.