Facebook’s war against the calling feature of mobile phones continues. TechCrunch reported Thursday that the Android Messenger application is getting an update with the ability to call friends using voice over Internet protocol. This will roll out gradually to U.S. users, so Facebook Messenger on Android users may not have it immediately. People with Facebook Home can also use VoIP to call friends, without eating into their minutes.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. Voice-over-Internet-protocol calling has made its way across the pond for Facebook Messenger users, as the social network updated its iOS version of the app in the U.K. to allow users there to make free VoIP calls.
Facebook continues to wage war with the call features of cell phones by introducing VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) and voice features. This time, the social network’s latest update to the Messenger application for Android includes free calling for Canadian users. With this update, Facebook also introduced deeper group messaging options.
Ever since studies showed that the average Facebook page’s posts reach an average of 16 percent of fans, many marketers (as well as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and actor George Takei) have been quite unhappy with the social network, feeling that they’re being pinched for advertising. But what if there was a way for Facebook to let pages reach most of their fans, yet still make money? A writer for The Next Web came up with some ideas that Facebook could use to gain some revenue while getting back into the good graces of those who manage pages.
Facebook is integrating voice messaging more and more on its mobile applications. After offering it on both Android and iOS versions of its Messenger app, the social network installed it on the newest update of the Android native app. However, it’s only available for private messages. A new app, GroupVox, brings voice messaging to Facebook groups and events.
Facebook has been constantly tweaking its mobile applications, but the newest change may be one of the biggest additions — voice messaging. The social network released updates to its stand-alone Messenger apps for iOS and Android Thursday that include the ability to send voice messages. Facebook also announced that it is testing voice over internet protocol (VoIP) within the iOS version of Messenger — but only for Canadian users.
Internet-telephony platform Vox.io said it will launch a new version of its service that will allow users to chat with their Facebook friends from within its interface.
SpeechTrans will soon allow Facebook users to be able to chat with each other in up to nine different ones, with automatic translations. The translation software is powered by Nuance, the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software.
If your Facebook friends have smart phones, a new app launched by Vonage today means you can call them for free. The Vonage Mobile application for Facebook lets you call your Facebook friends for free anywhere in the world, as long as they also have the app.
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Telephone is a recently launched Facebook application that lets you make free VoIP calls directly from Facebook. There are several other applications that enable you to do this on Facebook and other networks like MySpace and Bebo, but Telephone, launched by BabyTel, is adding a few extra features to hopefully make it worth your while.
After adding the Telephone app to your Facebook account, you can launch the service and make phone calls directly to your Facebook friends. In order to make a VoIP call, both you and your friend will need to also have the application as well as the downloadable software. But the good thing about having the software installed on your computer is that the Telephone app can then be used as a standalone desktop application for sending and receiving calls even when you don’t have Facebook open in a web browser.
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