Skype has doubled the number of group calling participants from 25 to 50, beating Apple’s group FaceTime that allows a maximum of 32 people to be on the same audio or video call.
While this probably won’t be such a big deal for customers who mostly conduct one-on-one calls, people who use Skype apps for business, as well as smaller teams, are going to like being able to conduct conference calls with speakers based all around the globe.
To help people manage these crowded calls, the Microsoft-owned company has also made a few changes to how customers start them, including a new notification.
We added a notification to replace the ringing as the default, allowing every member of the group to receive a quick ping to join the call. These notifications are a simple, unobtrusive way to get your calls and meeting started, be it between family, friends, podcast guests or coworkers.
In addition, every Skype group with up to 50 people now supports calling.
You can, of course, cherry-pick individual members of a group chat that you’d like to ring. If your group is less than 25 participants, you can ring the entire group.
To use this cool new feature, be sure to update your copy of Skype for iPhone, Skype for iPad and Skype for Mac to the latest version.
Skype’s FAQ has more information.