To access the calling feature, users can tap on the right-hand bar that supports messaging in the iOS app, select a person they want to call, and then check to see if that person has the “free call” feature listed under their profile (that can be found through the “i” information button next to their name).

Facebook’s support for placing calls over Wi-Fi is somewhat of a closed system since it’s limited to people who’ve downloaded the particular app, as my colleague Stacey Higgenbotham pointed out. But Facebook’s adoption of voice communication could have an impact on the current carriers if suddenly 1 billion users have a new way to talk to each other.

The company began testing the idea in Canada in January, and then added voice calling to Messenger in the United States a few weeks later.

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However, with Facebook’s recent addition of voice calling to its Messenger app, the company is poised to demonstrate to the mobile industry the benefits – and power – of scale, first hand. And in what can only be described as the perfect murder, Facebook is now in a position to effectively kill the traditional telephone, starting with the phone number.

How it could work

The implementation of Facebook’s voice features are straightforward yet unique: You make a call by tapping a name, not a number, a username, or any other type of identifier. You’re calling a social connection. That in itself is not shocking, but Facebook can go even further. Its database already contains the phone number of tens of millions of people. (For fun, just type a friend’s phone number in the Facebook search bar, and you’ll likely see their profile pop up instantly.)

This means it could offer streamlined interoperability with existing phone networks in a way that a company like Skype, Viber, Whatsapp — or smaller voice calling startups — can’t so easily manage. Further, all the pages you “like” on Facebook have numbers connected to them, so calling a business is just as simple and at-hand as calling a friend. In the near future then, you will call a business via Facebook on the basis of a friend’s request or a like. No more unwanted calls. No more Yellow Pages. No more looking up a phone number you can’t remember. Just a connection.

What of the gatekeepers?

The real question is how existing gatekeepers of the mobile industry – namely phone carriers and manufacturers – will respond to this apparent threat to their apparent core business. The first, familiar route is to stick to their guns. Put up a blockade, offer low-level crippled integration, or just try to ignore it and hope it just goes away.

Or, they could embrace the disruption with open arms. Carriers need to realize that as the unlimited plan dies, there’s huge opportunity in sending more and more communication over a pay-per-use data line. (They just need to bill their customers in a transparent way.)

This second option would also include supporting Facebook’s interoperability with normal phone numbers. That means you’d be able to call grandma via Facebook whether or not she even has a Facebook account (or even knows what it is) – her old landline will ring just as easily. And when grandma calls you, your Facebook app picks up the call, using number forwarding that’s comparable to Google Voice.

Manufacturers could offer Facebook deeper integration as well. Currently VoIP calls on your iPhone don’t feel like a normal phone call, but they could if Apple were to allow Facebook to control or mimic the iPhone’s Phone app. (While that might sound impossible, don’t forget that Facebook is already integrated in the Contacts app – it is already on the iOS platform in a major way.) And Android is already giving Skype and other VoIP apps ways to generate an incoming call on a phone without sending an often overlooked push notification. Apple can go this route as well.

And now, the future

It’s safe to assume that Facebook is deep in talks already with operators and manufacturers to create a partnership that benefits all of them. To date though, even major VoIP companies like Skype have been unsuccessful in pulling this off. Facebook has a scale that even Skype needed at one point to reach enough people for VoIP calling to become ubiquitous. It won’t stop with this recent addition to the Messenger app. There’s too much for the company to win. (Yes, that includes blocking competitors.)

That Facebook phone you keep hearing about? I believe it’s an app. Sure, it could pull a Google Chrome and try and completely replace a broken platform with its own, but it doesn’t need to – its scale forces partners to listen. Facebook can kill the phone as we know it simply by rebuilding it as an app. It can completely replace Messenger, and it won’t have the voice call option as hidden as it is right now.

It will allow you to communicate through text, voice, and ultimately even video chat. It will use data, lots of it, and carriers might even learn to enjoy billing you for that on a pay-per-use basis. It will work over Wi-Fi too, which will come in handy as 4G LTE networks become more widespread. It will improve the quality of your call in the same way the CD improved the quality of your record collection.

And, by using a huge database of phone numbers, it will even let you call keep in touch with anyone stuck using that dated technology. “Grandma? This is Robert! I’m calling you on Facebook. No, it’s not a phone… .”

Disclosure: One of Karma’s minority investors is currently employed by Facebook, as a designer for products unrelated to this story.

Robert Gaal is co-founder of mobile data startup Karma. Follow him on Twitter @robertgaal. 

Photo courtesy of bluefish/Shutterstock.com.

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When contacted by us, Voxer CEO Tom Katis told GigaOM:

Facebook contacted Voxer to notify us that they would be blocking Voxer users’ ability to find and connect with their Facebook friends via Voxer. Facebook informed us that the change would occur in 48 hours. Facebook stated that they view our service, with its tens of millions of users, as a “competitive social network.”

“We were a bit taken aback because we never thought of them as competition,” said Katis. This is a body blow for the company as Facebook has been a growth and retention engine. While Katis tried to play it cool, the reality within the four walls of the company is quite different.

Katis said that unlike some other apps, he was just using the authorization aspect of Facebook’s platform. Voxer used Facebook’s login system to find a Voxer user’s Facebook friends who are also on Voxer. Unlike other apps, it didn’t post messages to one’s news feed.

Facebook has yet to confirm the ban and we are waiting for their response.

Voxer has been using Facebook’s login technology since its launch in May 2011, and today about a third of its “millions” of daily active members use Facebook to log in. The ban will start to impact the Voxer community within a day or so.

Facebook’s actions are worth noting, especially for other app developers, he said. “Basically if you are a company that uses Facebook’s platform, your access can be taken away in a somewhat arbitrary manner,” he pointed out. “It is a cautionary tale, if anything.” Katis’ comments are bolstered by the sequence of events that lead to this suspension of access. Take a look and be the judge:

• January 3, 2013: Facebook introduced voice messaging to Facebook Messenger.
• January 16, 2013: Voxer introduced its Android app. (Katis told us the Android app release has significantly increased messaging in the days following the release).
• January 17, 2013: Facebook announced VOIP calling via Facebook Messenger.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but notice the correlation between Facebook’s product upgrades and this decision. It is not clear if the decision to ban Voxer was just applicable to Voxer or if it will be extended to other apps such as Wechat and Kakao. What about Skype?

To be honest, Facebook’s response shouldn’t come as a surprise. Having seen Instagram and Pinterest turbo-charge their growth by using Facebook’s open graph, the world’s largest social network has decided that it will never let anyone get big by using its graph as a crutch. When it saw Snapchat explode and it came up with its xeroxed version: Poke.

These actions remind me of the days when Microsoft would use its influence to crush hit apps on its platform and come up with their own substandard version of that app. Maybe it is time for antitrust heavyweights to take out a clean blotter and start making notes.

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It sounds like Facebook will first make this available to Android users first in India, Australia, Indonesia, Venezuela, and South Africa before it goes fully international. Facebook for iOS will also soon get the same open access but the exact timing isn’t being announced.

The move will help Facebook appeal to a wider audience of users, many of whom may not be ready to become Facebook users. It also helps position Messenger as a better competitor to SMS, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and other third-party messaging services like WhatsApp, which only requires a phone number to sign up. Coincidentally, Facebook was rumored to be looking at acquiring WhatsApp, though it appears the two aren’t negotiating. 

Facebook may be looking at this as a way to go after users who have been attracted to RIM’s BBM or WhatsApp. Or it could be an opportunity to introduce the Facebook brand to new users and gradually pull them into a regular account. Facebook Messenger for Android has more than 50 million downloads but that still puts it behind WhatsApp, who just passed 100 million Android downloads.

I think it’s smart for Facebook to keep innovating on messaging. In Asia, messaging services like KakaoTalk, Line and Weixin are building huge communities of users, who all use those apps more like social networking services. That is where Facebook could eventually see a lot of competition: through a mobile-first social app that uses messaging as a starting point. For these Asian competitors, the more they grow, the more they can go head-to-head with Facebook, which doesn’t have a great history in mobile.

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You can see all recent activity on multiple conversations in the Boards tab.

Updated: Group messaging and conversation apps are everywhere these days, and it seems barely a day goes by before we hear about another major player trying to get in the game, like Skype with its GroupMe acquisition. But despite all the competition, a new entrant with a less-is-more approach and emphasis on privacy might be just what some users (particularly those in business) are looking for. That’s exactly what the new iPhone app Glassboard offers.

Glassboard is the latest from Mac and iOS developer Sepia Labs, run by Brian Brent Simmons, the guy who created popular RSS reader NetNewsWire and desktop blogging tool MarsEdit. The new app is, as mentioned, designed around group messaging with a special focus on privacy. Users of the app create boards to which they can add users via email invites. Glassboard doesn’t plug into any of your social networks, and the only person who can add members to a board is the board’s original creator.

Finding and viewing boards is impossible unless you’re a member, and any content shared won’t be indexed for search. Board creators also have the power to revoke membership and delete boards instead of just leaving the conversation, something that isn’t an option with other messaging apps like Google+’s Huddle, for example.

Threaded replies and likes for messages within conversations is a nice advantage for Glassboard.

Glassboard also has some nice usability advantages over its competitors, including the ability to assign a picture to each board in order to make it much easier to see at a glance which is which. You can also share images in conversations, as well as text, video and location data, and each message posted can be liked or replied to directly via commenting. It adds up to a much more collaboration-oriented experience.

Other options that you might recognize from Facebook Messenger, Google+ Huddle or GroupMe are also present, like the ability to mute conversations individually or globally and whether to receive push notifications, email notices or both. The app also has one limitation that might prove aggravating but that makes sense from the perspective of encouraging growth: You can only create three new boards to start and then you’re granted new boards for each new invitee who joins the system.

With such a crowded field, Glassboard might have a tough time achieving mainstream success, but it might need to. Its primary appeal, from my perspective, is as an easy way for workplace teams who depend on mobile devices to stay in touch (like a small distributed sales force, for example) and collaborate without having to worry about distraction from their social networks. Glassboard is also available on Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms too, so using it doesn’t depend on what kind of mobile device your teammates are using.

Ed: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Brent Simmons as Brian Simmons.

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Interactions not communication

Why is Skype spending so much money on a relatively small company with a relatively small user base when compared to Skype? The answer can be found in some of my posts from earlier this year. When contemplating Google’s ongoing battle with Facebook, I wrote:

…instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions…..To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.

In today’s hyper-connected world, in order to be relevant, a service provider or a device maker has to figure out how to constantly engage its end users and in doing so, keep their attention and thus ensure the ongoing need for their offerings. As ngmoco CEO Neil Young recently told me, the longer you have an opportunity to engage with the customer, the more opportunities you have for more monetization.

Skype so far has been reliant on its instant messaging and voice (and video) call offerings to engage its hundreds of millions of users. However, the mobile phone changes that behavior – shifting the focus to more instantaneous services such a GroupMe in addition to a combination of other communication mediums – SMS, mobile phone, Beluga, Twitter and Facebook Messages in addition to email.

Skype, which has been one of the earliest beneficiaries of the iPhone boom, has seen lightweight group messaging clients like GroupMe gaining in popularity, and it’s right to be worried. GroupMe, which uses Internet telephony start-up Twilio’s back-end, could have easily added voice chats to the system and someday, even video, thus becoming an instant competitor for Skype.

So why did GroupMe sell out?

And as good as their future looked on paper, I’m pretty sure increasing competition from Facebook must have spooked the guys at GroupMe, who only last week told Ryan Kim that they wanted to remain independent.

The fact remains that the sands of time were against GroupMe. The oncoming competition from Facebook Messenger, Google’s Huddle and most importantly Apple’s iMessage were going to fundamentally increase the pressure on GroupMe, which in turn decided that it was better to find comfort in the arms of a much larger company.

What Skype gets out of the deal

For starters, Skype can use GroupMe and other apps it’s buying up to build a communication platform for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 offering. That would make a lot of strategic sense. In addition, it would allow Skype/Microsoft to have a hedge against Facebook.

Even though Skype is a partner with Facebook for now, they need to be worried about the future, as Facebook will eventually compete with them. Just as Skype reduced voice to an application on the Internet, Facebook is slowly reducing voice calls to an afterthought in a multi-communication world.

When Facebook announced its video chat offering in partnership with Skype, I wrote:

Even if we buy into the argument that Facebook can get Skype a lot of new customers, I still think it is a highly risky strategy, and it runs the risk of the company losing a grip on its customers. Let’s remember that at one point even IBM thought Microsoft was only going to help them sell more computers and make more money.

Skype has a big subscriber base, but it can’t bet on holding on to them forever. At one time, AOL and Myspace were companies with hundreds of millions of subscribers and now they are a quickly vanishing shadow in muddy waters. In buying GroupMe, Skype for now gets a chance to build a new mobile experience and hopefully find engagement and attention.

Will that be enough for Skype?

From a long-term perspective, Skype as an entity is going to have an identity crisis. It cannot figure out whether it wants to be a friend to the consumers or whether it wants to be a corporation-focused collaboration company.

The muddled, confusing and terrible user experience of its desktop applications only highlights that dichotomy.  And that identity confusion is so aptly reflected in this blog post from company CEO Tony Bates.

This acquisition is another step towards our vision to provide a global multi-modal and multi-platform communications experience. It complements our existing leadership in voice and video communications by providing best in class mobile text-based communications and innovative features around group messaging that enable users to connect, share locations and photos and make plans with their closest ties. This latest acquisition, coupled with our acquisition of Qik earlier this year, augments our role as an innovator in driving unique mobile user experiences.

I think the big decision Bates & Co. need to make: decide who they really want to be!

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Getting started

Facebook Messenger requires only that you have an active Facebook account to play. That should make things easy for about 750 million of you. If you’re among the rare few smartphone owners who aren’t yet on Facebook, you can also sign up for an account right from the Messenger app, thanks to a link that shoots you to the mobile sign-up page in your device’s browser.

Home screen

Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be taken to a screen displaying a list of your messages. This will pull in any existing conversations you have on Facebook itself, including Facebook Chat conversations and Facebook Messages. You can interact with any of these existing message threads just as you would on the Facebook site. Each message in the list displays the names of conversation participants, a preview of the most recent message received or sent, when the last message was received or sent, and a blue circle if there are unread messages in the conversation thread.

Swiping left on any conversation listed on the home screen will bring up a button that allows you to archive it. Archived messages can still be viewed from the Facebook website, under Messages, by scrolling to the bottom of your inbox and hitting the View: Archived link.

Creating new messages and replying to existing ones

From the home screen, tapping the new message icon in the upper right corner (the one that looks like a pen writing on a square of paper) will bring up a new message creation screen. Here, you’ll asked to specify recipients in the “To:” field. Just start typing on the device keyboard to begin bringing up potential recipients from your on-device address book, or from your list of Facebook friends. A little phone icon next to a person’s name indicates that they have a mobile number available, which means your message will be sent to them via SMS if they don’t have the Facebook Messenger app installed. If a recipient receives a message from the app via SMS, they can simply reply to that text to contribute to the thread.

Once you’ve chosen your recipients, or if you’re replying, once you’ve tapped a conversation listed on the home screen, tapping the text entry field just above the keyboard will let you enter your message. The little arrow at the right of that same field indicates location sharing. Just tap it to either enable or disable sharing your location information with the message recipients. Tap the camera icon to the left of the text field to either take a picture, or choose one from your device’s library to include in the message.

Changing universal settings

From the home screen, tap the gear icon in the upper left corner to access settings that apply to all conversations. You can choose to mute new message alerts here for either one hour, or until the next morning at 8 AM. You can’t turn entirely off alerts for all conversations from here, but you can effectively do that by turning off Notifications for the Facebook Messenger app entirely in the iOS Settings application.

In the Facebook Messenger general settings, you can also access the online Help database for the app, as well as view a screen instructing you how to turn location services on and off for the app in general. Finally, you can log out of your account from this screen.

Changing individual conversation settings

For each conversation thread, you can set specific settings that won’t affect the behavior of others. To do this, simply tap on any conversation from the home screen, and then tap the gear icon in the upper right corner of the conversation screen.

If you’re working with a conversation between only two people, you’ll be presented with a screen that lets you change the alerts for this particular conversation. You can choose to turn alerts completely off, as well as mute them for one hour or until the next morning. If you’re looking at a group conversation, you’ll also have the option to change the conversation name here, which makes it easier to keep track of what’s being discussed in each thread.

From the conversation settings screen, tap at the bottom to view the people involved in the conversation, or the map icon to view the locations of participants, if they’re sharing that info. On the People screen, you can see a list of everyone taking part in the conversation, and either create a group conversation if you’re looking at one with just two participants, or add additional people if there are more than two people involved. On the Map screen, tapping map pins will tell you who checked in there, and how long ago they checked in.

That’s pretty much all you need to know to get started using Facebook Messenger. Some have been heralding it as a threat to iMessage, but considering that iMessage will be built-in to all iPhones once iOS 5 arrives, and will work automatically when users go to send text messages, they aren’t really all that competitive in my opinion. I, for one, intend to use both. Anyone else planning on making Facebook’s offering a permanent part of their device setup?

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You don’t necessarily have to choose one above the others, but here’s a comparison of their function and features in case you were curious about how they stack up (click to enlarge).

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But could this launch mean the end of Beluga as its own standalone app? Beluga is still available on its own for the time being — but from the looks of it, that may not last for long. In a series of emails sent Tuesday, a Facebook spokesperson told me:

People are still currently able to use Beluga. They operate as separate apps though. …We’re still determining next steps for Beluga. Keep you posted in the future if we have more details to share.

Facebook Messenger is certainly promising, but Beluga has attracted an enthusiastic and loyal following of fans including our own Om Malik, who named Beluga GigaOM’s “App of the Day” back in February 2011. It would be a bit sad to see Beluga go, but with the new debut of Facebook Messenger — a fully featured project that has been the top priority for Beluga’s founding team for nearly six months — it would not be especially surprising. We will make sure to report on Beluga’s fate as soon as we learn more about it.

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Facebook has already started to supplant

On Tuesday, Facebook is launching a mobile app for iPhone and Android that allows users to send and receive real-time messages. Dubbed Facebook Messenger, it’s the first standalone app to be launched by the company aside from the general purpose apps Facebook has for various mobile devices.

The development of the Facebook Messenger app has been headed up by the founding team of Beluga, a group text messaging service acquired by Facebook in March. Beluga’s founders Ben Davenport, Lucy Zhang and Jonathan Perlow told me in an interview Tuesday morning that they have been working on Facebook Messenger essentially since they joined the company after the Beluga deal, with help from the entire existing Facebook Messaging team.

The app works like this: After downloading the app to your mobile phone, you sign in using your Facebook credentials. The app is essentially an extension of Facebook messages, so all of your texts, chats, emails and message history are all within one place — synced across mobile and web. The app can be used to send messages to groups or individuals, and messages can include location information and attachments such as photos.

To me, the coolest part of the app is that it can deliver messages through app notifications and SMS texts, so you can communicate with your friends whether they have the Messenger app or not. Facebook Messenger will be available in the US and Canada starting Tuesday, and will roll out in other regions “shortly,” Davenport said.

As far as Facebook strategy goes, this is a huge move for the company. Om has written here before that Facebook’s future depends on how it can become more fully ingratiated with its users through mobile. While Facebook has become a big part of people’s mobile activity already, the launch of Facebook Messenger shows that the company is willing to make major investments in its mobile growth for the months and years ahead.

Here are some screenshots of Facebook Messenger for iPhone (click to enlarge):

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