WhatsApp for Android gets group video calling feature

Whats App is known to be testing new features often in different parts of the world and on different platforms. The Facebook-owned instant messenger introduced voice calling facility years ago, followed by one-to-one video calling. Now, what looks imminent is a new feature that will let more than two people perform a video call, or in other words – Group video calling.

The feature was first spotted by WABeta Info, a website that keeps track of new features in WhatsApp. Hints of group video calling in WhatsApp dropped in the version 2.17.443 on Android last month. But nothing much was unearthed about the particular functionality. Now, the website seems to have dug deeper in the app’s new version on Android – 2.18.39. Unfortunately, this is not an official rollout but is visible only to beta users.
It has been mentioned that the new app version includes a new option to add participants to a group call. In the screenshot posted by the news website on its Twitter account, one can see the option to add more members in a video call on the top right corner. It is worth adding that the feature currently supports calling up to three more members. This is in addition to you and the other participants. So in total, at most five users can be on a single video call at a tim

We are not yet sure when WhatsApp plans to pan this feature out to non-beta users. However, since it has shown up in beta testing, it increases the chance to reach the non-beta users as well in future.
Recently, CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg in the company’s Q4 2017 earnings call announced that WhatsApp has reached a new user base milestone of 1.5 billion. He added that WhatsApp witnesses around 60 billion messages being sent every day.

The instant messenger is also focusing on bringing more small-medium businesses on to its Whats App for Business platform. Xiaomi is the newest firm to join the platform after Book My Show, Myntra, Netflix and few others.