San Francisco (AFP)
Two months after the launch of the "Messenger Rooms", which allow you to find your "friends" in "virtual rooms", Facebook now offers the possibility of using them to broadcast live conferences or yoga classes, for example .
Until now it was a question of opening a "room" to all its contacts or by invitation, for informal discussions.
The tool, in the countries where it is available, should now allow artists to address their fans to raise funds or organizations to broadcast a religious ceremony or to "visit" a place temporarily closed to the public, such as museums or zoos.
The Covid-19 pandemic and social distancing measures quickly established Zoom, the videoconferencing software, as a portal to access one's social, professional, school life, etc.
Tech groups that already offered similar video calling services for individuals or businesses quickly jumped into the breach.
Teams (Microsoft), Hangout and Meet (Google) or even Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram (Facebook) have thus strengthened their offer in terms of capacities and functionalities, with the "mosaic" view of participants, for example.
This market quickly became essential for all communication players.
Accused by the start-up Slack of forcing the hand of users of its popular Office suite by imposing the Teams tool on them, Microsoft replied Wednesday that "Slack suffered from its lack of videoconferencing".
© 2020 AFP