Facebook Adds Free Voice Messaging And Limited VoIP To Messenger App

Both iOS and Android users will be seeing an update for their Facebook Messenger app starting today, one that will allow them to begin use Facebook's own flavor of Voice Messaging. This feature is included in the download for all while Canada specifically gets a unique opportunity to work with VoIP in a sort of beta test of the service. The Canadian VoIP test will be working with iOS only (at the start) while Voice Messaging is set to hit Android and iOS all at once.

This release allows Voice Messaging – otherwise known as voicemail – to be integrated into the conversation rather than sitting beside it. This service is now not unlike the Walkie Talkie app Voxer what with its ability to record messages and push them to users in a chatroom. Facebook's brand of this sort of functionality appears now to be a smaller part of the larger chat window while the Voxer app makes voice messages the primary function.

In Canada, Facebook app users are beginning to get VoIP functionality. This ability will allow you to call your friends using the internet, and is currently only going to to be available to users physically inside Canada calling other Facebook users inside Canada on iOS – on the iPhone, that is. This functionality uses data instead of phone "minutes".

Facebook continues their ultimate mission to make sure any time you want to communicate with a friend, it's through them – with everything from Skype calls via the browser (now defunct) and the newly updated Poke functionality in app form for mobile devices. Have a peek at the timeline below to see what else Facebook has been doing to keep you interested and stay tuned for the all-encompassing Facebook functionality wizard to command your communication from bottom to top.