In 2014, Facebook removed messaging from Facebook’s main app, pushing mobile users to download a separate app to continue using the feature as part of its quest to make Messenger unique. The video calling feature appeared in 2015, followed by messaging between Instagram apps and finally group chats between apps. More recently, new shortcuts have been added, including an @everyone tag to alert all participants or a / silent switch to send a message that won’t trigger pop-up messages for everyone else in the group.
According to Meta, the number of both audio and video calls has increased by 40% compared to the beginning of 2020, and there are 300 million calls every day. The Messenger app first introduced voice calls in 2013, and this latest feature takes it one step further, turning it into a full-fledged hub. There are many competitors among the applications that you can use to call friends and family (for example, your phone, your own WhatsApp Meta or something else that Google is doing right now), but the numbers suggest that this is an option for many people.