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WASHINGTON: Facebook has decided to bring back audio and video calling to its flagship social networking service, the latest attempt to fine-tune its communications features, according to business channel, Bloomberg.
According to the report, the feature will allow users to make video or audio calls to their Facebook friends via the main app. The feature is expected to be introduced soon.
“The new feature is just a test, but it’s meant to reduce the need to jump back and forth between Facebook’s main app and its Messenger service”, the Bloomberg quoted Connor Hayes, director of product management at Messenger, as saying.
Chats, however, were not being brought back to the main app and users will still have to download Messenger if they wish to chat with Facebook friends, the report added.
Earlier versions of Facebook had allowed users to chat with friends while browsing the app. In 2011, Facebook split up the feature and introduced the Messenger app for communications.
Most Facebook users adapted to this change and separately downloaded the Messenger app for communications, however, it seems that Facebook has decided that Messenger wasn’t the best idea after all.
This is not the first time that Facebook was considering getting Messenger back into Facebook. In 2019, the company tested bringing text chats back into the main app with a dedicated inbox and splashed “from Facebook” across Oculus, Instagram, and WhatsApp.