After previewing the personal version of Teams nearly a year ago on iOS and Android devices, Microsoft has finally launched the new personalized version of the Microsoft Teams app today for personal use meant for communication among friends and family members. The new version of Microsoft Teams will allow all-day free video calls. This will be similar to the original Microsoft Teams that was meant for business interactions in terms of features and will offer services like chatting, video calling, sharing locations and files and setting up a calendar.
The Microsoft Teams personal version will also allow users to set a meeting with up to 300 people in video calls for free for a time limit of 24 hours. As per an American technology news website The Verge, “Microsoft will eventually enforce limits of 60 minutes for group calls of up to 100 people after the pandemic, but keep 24 hours for 1:1 calls”. Microsoft has decided to offer everyone free 24-hour one-on-one video calls feature that was present in the preview version which was launched in November last year. Microsoft Teams for personal use has been made available on all platforms – the web, mobile and desktop.
Microsoft Teams’ business-oriented app has monthly paid subscriptions but in order to compete with other video calling platforms like Zoom and Slack which have performed extremely well since the onset of the pandemic because of their free edition, Microsoft has unveiled the new version as a free edition of the original Teams app and also having almost the same features of it.
According to the company’s CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft Teams now has 145 million daily active users globally, and most of these users have joined the app since the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The company’s efforts to make the platform more user friendly can be seen in the fact that it has added more than 300 features in Teams over the past year, including more than 100 new capabilities so far in 2021.
