After years of capping video calls at only four participants, Facebook has finally deemed this socially-isolating time as a sign to upgrade video call sizes.
A fact I found extremely limiting when I recently began using Facebook-owned WhatsApp to stay in touch with family while (briefly) overseas was the limit to only three other people in video calls. Not only was it annoying from a communications standpoint, but it just seemed a ridiculous limitation to me in the era of technology we live in – why should such a clearly artificial cap even exist?
Well, amongst the viral times we are now experiencing (the same ones which sent me packing back home from overseas) Facebook's WhatsApp team has finally deigned the time ripe to begin rolling out octocalls to the WhatsApp platform – allowing up to eight people to video-conference simultaneously.
The ‘feature' is currently in testing, which means users on Android and iOS need to install the beta versions of WhatsApp to be able to make octocalls – all those you are calling will need to also be in the beta for the call to connect, however.
Feel free to enter the beta program and start upping you video-call game.
