Hasta La Gadget!

When you’re sharing a file in Google Drive, your time should be spent collaborating, not arranging conversations. Right? Google agrees strongly enough to have just finished tweaking Drive’s web interface for better teamwork. Users actively working on the project now show as mouse-over icons, with their Google+ relationship front and center — if they’re not friends and you want them to be, you can change that almost immediately. It’s even faster to start group chats, as a new dedicated button will launch a chatroom for everyone who’s currently looking at the project. Google expects the speedier Drive socialization to reach us within a day or two, and it’s planning to bolster the update with wider file support sometime in the near future.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google Drive Blog

Facebook has finally rolled out a new feature to its U.S. Android users that now allows them to initiate a free voice call with one of their Facebook friends. The voice calling feature will be available automatically, meaning you won’t have to go to Google Play to download an update. The feature has been available to iOS users for quite some time now, and Android users in Canada had the feature since early March. The voice calling feature uses up your data plan instead of your actual minutes, so if you’re on a tiered data plan, proceed with caution.

In order to initiate a free voice call, all you have to do is choose the contact that you want to call. You have to initiate a text conversation first. Afterwards, you will see an “i” icon at the top right of the message box. Click on that and you will have access to 3 separate options, one that says “Free Call”. If you’re using Chat Heads, you can initiate a free voice call by tapping the 3 dots that appear next to your contact’s name.

Facebook Messenger really has become an all-in-one messaging service. Not only does Facebook Messenger allow you to instant message your Facebook friends, it also lets you to integrate your SMS texts into it, allowing you to consolidate your conversations. Alongside this new free calling feature, all Facebook really needs to add is a video-calling feature for Android devices and it will truly be an all-in-one service.

Facebook is trying its best to get more users to stray away from other popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp, and migrate over to its messaging platform. Just a few days ago, WhatsApp announced that it has over 200 million active users on its service, a number Facebook desperately wants. Messenger poses a good threat against WhatsApp now that it has all of these features tied into it. This new feature will also be helpful in making its Facebook Home launcher more appealing to users. If you haven’t tested out Facebook Home yet, you can check out our review of Facebook Home here to see what it’s all about.

Facebook Messenger for Android updated with free voice calling is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

WhatsApp’s popularity has skyrocketed since its launch back in 2009. At All Things D’s conference, D: Dive Into Mobile, Jan Koum, CEO of WhatsApp, stated that the smartphone app is even more popular than Twitter now. It currently has over 200 million monthly active users, who send out and receive over 20 billion messages each day. WhatsApp processes a estimated total of 12 billion outbound messages and 8 billion inbound messages on a daily basis.

WhatsApp generates its revenue off of its annual 99 cents subscription fee. By charging such a meager fee, it is able to forgo ads and provide its users with the best messaging experience available. It is being used all around the world by millions and millions of users. Koum sees much more success in WhatsApp’s future. He says that he’s looking forward to the day when the world is filled with billions of phones. He says,

“And once that happens its going to be extremely easy to monetize. But a lot more people need to join the smartphone revolution and a lot more people need to buy more goods on their phones.”

Koum also says that there’s no chance of advertising ever making it to WhatsApp. He states that WhatsApp is completely anti-advertising, because no one likes ads. He feels that we already come across a lot of ads throughout our daily routines that there’s no need to bring any more into the picture. He believes that bringing ads to WhatsApp, or any app, is a bad idea. He states,

“Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don’t want to be interrupted by ads when you’re chatting with your loved ones.”

WhatsApp is widely renown as one of the most popular, if not the most popular, messaging apps for smartphones. It even plays the good guy by bringing its app to Blackberry 10, an OS with a small user base, while other social apps, like Instagram, won’t even bother to bring their apps to the platform because there’s “no real benefit” to it. With its huge success, its no wonder why rumors are floating around about companies wanting to buy it out.

[via All Things D]

WhatsApp boasts 200M monthly active users, now bigger than Twitter is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook rolled out a new paid messaging feature late last month that allows British users to message their favorite celebrities for a fee. The paid messaging service was another way for Facebook to generate more revenue, however, it may be crossing a line. The paid messaging service sends your message straight to the celebrities’ priority inbox, and the scale of the fee depends on the popularity of the celebrity.

The cheapest celebrity you can message is Dara O’Briain, a comedian and TV game show host, who you can message for 65 pence, or $1.00, which is the same fee if you want to priority message any normal person. The highest fees so far is Tom Daley, an Olympic Diver, Michael Rose, a former children’s laureate, and Ed Sheeran’s fake account. They cost 10.68 pounds to message, or about $16.38.

This new feature is very similar to the feature it has in America, where users can pay $1, $5, or $15 to send a priority message to someone who isn’t on their friend’s list. The message is sent to the person’s main inbox, instead of being rerouted to their non-priority inbox. This way, the receiver will be notified of the new message. There used to be a $100 fee to send a priority message to a celebrity, but it was cancelled due to people being able to message Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, himself.

This new feature, if it becomes more widespread, will be a nuisance to celebrities. Having millions of fans being able to directly contact you can get bothersome quickly. All of the priority messaging fees will go to Facebook directly, with the celebrities receiving no benefit from this new feature. On the bright side, at least Facebook is only allowing people who are at least 18-years old to send a priority message, but then again, how hard is it to fake a birthday? In other news, be sure to check out our hands-on with Facebook’s new service, Facebook Home, which is set to be released in 3 days.

[via The Sunday Times]

Facebook charges you to message celebrities directly is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s just a billion bucks, why not purchase one of the quickest growing multi-platform message ecosystems in the mobile universe: WhatsApp? That’s what Google has been rumored to be chatting about this week, as an inside source speaking with Digital Trends tells it. This is a story that feeds quite well into the idea that Google is creating their own every-device messaging app system the likes of which would transform their multi-tiered systems into a singular hero.

Both Facebook and Google have been tipped to have approached the folks behind WhatsApp before today, and as they’ve continued to explode in popularity over the past few months, it would appear that they may have reached prime-time for sales. Included in this purchase would be their next-level pricing scheme which has users paying a cool $0.99 a year for a complete tossing of advertisements in-app. If Google were to pick the team up, it could be that WhatsApp itself is kicked in the pants while the technology is folded into Google – no more dollars for you!

Also if this does turn out to be true, Google’s next-generation service might be ready for Google I/O 2013. That is the rumored “Babble” or “Babel.” One way or another, a Google message service that folds all others into itself will be big.

So right here at the dawn of the Facebook Phone and the next wave of Android devices and their messager apps, could it be time for Google to take another swipe? Seems so! Have a peek at the WhatsApp timeline below and get pumped up about the future of the Google-run app universe!

Google tipped to pick up WhatsApp for $1 Billion is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.