Video Conference

Dialpad, the company behind the video conferencing service UberConference, announced Tuesday the acquisition of video conferencing startup Highfive. The companies did not disclose the purchase price.

UberConference does have built-in video conferencing features, but the service so far is mostly known for its voice features.

Facebook has enabled its screen-sharing feature for the latest version of Facebook Messenger on iOS and Android mobile devices.

The new feature supports up to eight people in group chats or up to 16 people in Messenger Rooms. Facebook says it’s working on expanding the feature for up to 50 people in Rooms.

Microsoft announced Wednesday new features to improve the Microsoft Teams experience and beat Zoom, including the new Together Mode and the support to up to 1,000 people in a call.

Together Mode, digitally place up to 50 participants in a shared background, so it emulates the experience of sitting in the same room while meeting remotely.

Microsoft Teams also support for up to 1,000 participants in meetings, soon allow up to 20,000 viewers in presentations and seminars.

The video call and conferencing provider Zoom rolled back the decision to excluding encryption for free users. Zoom official announcement about the new release states: "This will enable us to offer E2EE as an advanced add-on feature for all of our users around the globe – free and paid."

The video call provider Zoom has announced that it complied with requests from the Chinese government to block meetings that commemorated the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Three sessions had attendees from mainland China and were shut down. The company has stated that it lacks the technology to exclude users based on region and therefore ended the meetings altogether, later saying that it won't comply with requests from the Chinese government in the future if the people are not located in mainland China.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Messenger Rooms, a tool for starting virtual hangouts with up to 50 people, without the need for users to have a Facebook account.

The account-free nature of Messenger Rooms would appear to be a direct response to Zoom, which has exploded to 300 million daily active users during the pandemic. Other video chat platforms like Skype have followed in Zoom’s footsteps, dropping account sign-up requirements and expanding the number of supported users.